


after (not we collided, we're in the teen wolf fandom for fucks sake)

by stereksheart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent Lives, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Stiles, Bounty Hunters, Creature Stiles Stilinski, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depressed Stiles Stilinski, F/F, Getting Together, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Nightmares, Nogitsune Trauma, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Scott is a Good Friend, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, Torture, Underage Smoking, Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:28:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28449942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereksheart/pseuds/stereksheart
Summary: "I just know that Death is in town. And she's reaping with a joy, you can't imagine."—The nogitsune is gone – and it left everyone a wreck. Allison and Aiden survived, barely. Isaac is all over the place, Scott is a mess, Derek and Peter do their thing alone again which isn't healthy (for Derek at least), Kira is mildly traumatized, Lydia is a lot traumatized, and Stiles-Stiles doesn't even pretend to be okay anymore.He's really, really not.Turns out trying to resolve massive trauma, years long at times, while simultaniously juggling with relationships, friendship and family is a hard task. They insist on managing it together, though; until something goes very wrong, again.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Lydia Martin, Chris Argent/Sheriff Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinski & Everyone
Comments: 43
Kudos: 101





	1. hospital hallways

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first work on here lmao. please don't be harsh. and mind the tags yall. take care of yourselves. i love you and appreciate you xx

The hospital lights hurt in Scott's eyes. They always do. His heightened senses make him take in everything sharper, and the hospital lights are so bright they always hurt.

He feels kind of hollow. Aware of Lydia's soothing presence besides him, he keeps waiting, waiting for the news they're both hoping for.

Allison is still asleep.

She survived, barely, and Scott still remembers the smell of her blood like it's burnt into his nose, remembers in graphic detail how her slack body in his arms felt. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees hers close as well. They're still waiting for her to wake up. They're still waiting and hoping she keeps fighting like she always does.

His thoughts drift a little, to Aiden; who also got hurt more than anyone wanted him to. Ethan is still with him, probably, even though Scott did tell him to shower and get some sleep. Deaton is treating the werewolf. They're all sure he's going to recover as soon as his healing ability kicks back in.

Derek and Isaac are still traumatized from the brief control the nogitsune had over them. They were confused and going for a walk together the last time Scott saw them. Peter is... Peter. Scott is sure somewhere in there he has a heart, but the only person he seems to care about in this mess is Lydia.

She's right beside him, strawberry blonde curls straightened and falling over her shoulders like silk. Her makeup is perfection, her nails freshly done, her outfit so well put together Scott kind of feels shabby next to her.

Lydia is doing the things she knows she'll always have control over, doing simple grounding routines that keep her okay for bow. Scott admires her strength. He pushes himself to muster it up too, even though he can't stop thinking about how scared he is.

And Stiles- Stiles is the worst of them all.

Actually, if you had a look at the pack and considered what extremely traumatic things they went through, you'd think Stiles was one of the lesser affected people. He's quiet, collected, completely calm through all of this. And that is the whole problem.

Stiles is never quiet. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how hurt he is, he's not silent. He's not calm. He's never calm. Scott knows Stiles fidgets a lot to keep himself focused. It helps stimulate his brain. Now, he doesn't even do that. He's just still. All the time.

It drives Scott near insanity that he doesn't talk. Since the whole 'I'm a thousand years old, you can't kill me' exchange that still makes Scott shiver when he thinks about it, Stiles hasn't spoken a single word. To anyone. He doesn't even talk to his dad.

He doesn't eat either. Scott is not even sure if his best friend sleeps.

Scott is so worried about him. Stiles doesn't look people in the eye anymore. He just looks at his hands all the time. His hands that used to flail around so fragrantly, gesturing at anything and everything, and now they're just still. His fingers are just serving the sole purpose of being counted now.

Scott has caught him counting his fingers more than twenty times in the last four days. It's kind of hysterical.

Scott isn't the only one worried about Stiles, though. Lydia is too. The sheriff is kind of taking a vacation to look after him. His mom makes him food he doesn't eat. Isaac is with him frequently, even though he is not entirely there himself.

Isaac helps more than the others. They sort of just exist together because Isaac is traumatized and Stiles is empty. They help each other. Isaac babbles on and on about things and Stiles listens. Isaac told Scott that it helps to talk to Stiles, and Scott doesn't complain.

Isaac is all over the place. So is Derek. The older werewolf has been talking with his uncle and Chris Argent more, and to the sheriff. As far as Scott knows, Derek also spends some time with Stiles. It's like they're taking shifts to watch over their absent friend.

It's like they're monitoring him, actually. The thought kind of agonizes Scott.

Lydia doesn't really hang out with Stiles. Now that he's so empty and so not like he used to be, she is kind of reluctant about him. She tries to keep it together desperately and Scott knows telling her she'll probably fail would be of little to no use. She can't really look at Stiles without being reminded of her own trauma anymore.

She went through a lot. Scott wishes he could be as strong as her.

For now, they just wait.

His mom finally comes out of the hallway into the waiting room. She looks tired. She's been worried sick over Stiles' health that probably decreases even though he never says a word. Scott can't touch him with the intent of taking his pain. The last time he did, he doubled over and vomited, so nauseating was the pure agony he felt. Stiles had only blinked at him.

"She's awake," his mom says, and Scott's head snaps up.

Allison. She's awake.

"I called her dad already. And Isaac. They should be here soon." Melissa sighs. She looks kind of less fearful. "Scott, Lydia, she wants to see all of you. She's going to be alright."

Lydia allows herself one (1) shaky breath and then throws her hair over her shoulder. "Well, can we see her?"

Melissa shrugs. "Technically only Chris, but.. I think I can make a little exception here. As long as nobody sees you."

"We're stealthy," is the only thing Scott can think of saying. His mom gives him a brief smile at that.

Allison is pale.

She's lying in her bed, back propped up a little but not too much so her stab wound won't reopen. There are still some tubes in her arms, and she looks kind of sickly, but she's awake. She's awake and she's going to be okay.

Scott wants to be happy, but he finds with dread he can't bring himself to. Not when this many issues still need resolving. Not when he can't look at her without replaying that scene in his head, again and again and again.

They sit down next to Allison.

Lydia looks like her facade is going to break any second and she is going to cry her soul out. Her hands shake minimally, and Scott sees the way she tries to conceal it by clenching them into fists for a brief moment.

Then she says quietly, "Hi, Ally."

Allison smiles. It looks strong even when it should be looking weak. "Hi, you," she adresses them both.

"You're okay," Scott blurts out. He can't help himself. He keeps fearing this is just wishful thinking, a good daydream maybe. He needs someone to tell him this is real.

He looks down at his fingers.

Ten. He has ten.

Something in his stomach settles. There is a reason Stiles has this method over the reading test. It's so weirdly calming.

He looks up at Allison again. She's looking at him in worry. "You're really okay." His voice is shaking almost as violently as Lydia's hands.

Allison reaches out and grabs his. "Yeah. Everything is going to be alright."

 _No_ , Scott thinks, _Stiles isn't_.

"Isaac is all over the place," Lydia says suddenly. "Your dad too, even if he hides it well. They're on their way here. It's been hard on Isaac. He talks to Stiles a lot, that helps. Kind of."

Allison nods. A small smile spreads on her lips again. Scott is so, so grateful he didn't lose her.

Then her smile falls again. "Stiles."

Lydia tenses minimally. Allison looks tired all of the sudden. "Is he... is he alright?"

Scott closes his eyes. He thinks he's going to cry when Lydia says, "No. No, he isn't."

"How is he doing?"

"Bad," Lydia mumbles. "He doesn't talk, Ally. Not even one word. And he doesn't look people in the eye when they talk to him. He just sits there and is still. It's... it's..."

Her voice has a kind of bitter undertone when she says, "Stiles lost his mom, and Erica and Boyd. And he was always alright, some way or another, but losing himself? The nogitsune ripped his mind apart."

Scott feels a single tear running down his cheek when she says, "I don't think he can deal with that."

Scott dashes the tear away. They're silent until Allison says, "I need to talk to him."

He opens his eyes at that, and she looks so determined and desperate all of the sudden. "I need to tell him..."

Scott looks at her and can't stop thinking of her blood on his hands. He thinks he might be sick or something.

"I need to tell him he's not... guilty."

Scott winces. He can't help it.

Allison keeps talking, though. She seems like she needs to get it off her chest now. "I need to tell him that none of this is his fault. He needs to understand that I don't blame him. Nobody blames him. And if somebody does, I'm personally kicking that person's ass."

Lydia snorts lightly. It sounds a little bit like a sob.

They're falling apart at the seams and yet they're still determined to continue fighting. It settles Scott a bit, knowing he isn't alone in this. His heartbeat speeds up a little, it hurts in his chest.

"I'm so glad you're back," Lydia whispers. Scott can only nod. He feels like he can't really breathe.

Tears shimmer in Allison's eyes when she cracks a pained smile. "Yeah, me too." She reaches out for Scott's hands again and squeezes them, and the tremor in his lungs settles. He can breathe again.

Then Lydia's phone rings. She pulls it out dismissively and then raises her eyebrows at the screen. She picks up.

"Hey, Isaac," she says quietly.

Scott can't hear what Isaac is saying, but whatever it is, Lydia frowns deeply at it, crouching her eyebrows together. Her heartbeat picks up. "Is he- alright?"

She listens and blinks rapidly, trying to steady her breathing. Her heart keeps beating faster at whatever the beta is saying. "Okay. Okay, uhm, you need to tell him- Isaac, can you tell him Allison is awake?"

Listening. Absent nodding. Then a frown again. "What, you're taking him with you? Oh, okay. Good. Okay, good." She repeats herself in a very unlike Lydia fashion, cards a hand through her hair. "Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I'll- okay. See you in a bit."

She hangs up. "Your dad and Isaac are coming here," she says to Allison, "and Stiles."

"And Stiles?" Scott's voice is hoarse. His throat still feels too tight for proper breathing.

Lydia nods and presses her lips together. "He had a nightmare. Finally fell asleep after three days, apparently. He- uhm- he tried to strangle himself."

" _What?_ "

"In his sleep," Lydia presses out through gritted teeth. "Left bruises. He was like really trying to- you know. Get there."

Allison looks absolutely horrified. "He's coming here?"

"Yeah. Wants to see you, probably."

She leans her head back. "God, this is one of these days."

-

Isaac kind of busts in a few minutes later, Chris in tow, who is basically dragging Stiles with him.

They're weird to look at.

As soon as Scott sees them, he's overwhelmed with ridiculous relief; they're still here, they're alright, they're not gonna bleed out in his arms. He's got them. He didn't even know their absence was nagging him until they returned.

Stiles looks like a mess, as usual. He's looking at Scott.

Really looking at him. In the eyes.

Scott almost starts to cry.

His best friend's dark eyes are bloodshot, the bags underneath them an unreal deep shade of purple, finger-shaped bruises in a whole pattern of colors speck his throat, evidence of something so serious Scott isn't sure he can talk about it. He's wearing grey sweatpants, a red T-shirt, _two_ flannels on top of each other, then a cardigan and then a leather jacket.

It's quite the fit. Scott is pretty sure the leather jacket belongs to Derek and the cardigan to Isaac. He gets up almost immediately.

Chris lets go of Stiles' arm. His fingers twitch for a split second, like he wants to reach up and try strangling himself again. For a second, Scott is sure Stiles will say something; for a second, he thinks his best friend is just going to smile and crack a bad joke again that Scott would laugh at hysterically.

Nothing happens, though. Scott swallows down the stench in his heart and hugs Stiles instead.

He's real. He's here. He's not alright, but he's not dead.

Stiles doesn't hug him back, just goes stiff in Scott's embrace like he doesn't know what to do with it, and Scott only holds on for a couple of seconds before he lets go of him again and steps back. Stiles' eyes are fixated on a spot beneath him, probably next to Lydia's shoes judging by the angle.

Scott's brief sense of relief falters. Stiles is not looking him in the eyes anymore when he says, "Hey buddy," all cautious and gentle like he's talking to a scared animal.

He doesn't respond, but that's nothing new.

Isaac has a breakdown. Chris sheds more tears than Scott thought he would. Allison just seems so, so relieved they're both okay.

Stiles is absent. Lydia is keeping her respectful (fearful) distance to him. Scott keeps touching him, and as usual, he is cold as ice. It's like he can't get warm anymore, even when he dresses like this.

Lydia swears under her breath and catches Scott's attention. She moves closer, closer to Stiles than she has in days, and starts to fiddle around with his cardigan. "You look terrible," she mumbles, "seriously. What even is that pattern? Don't think for one second I'm letting you walk around like this."

Scott stares at her and his nerves are so frayed, his body is so tense. He feels like he is going to break and crumble. He feels like he is going to start crying, for like the thousandth time today.

Stiles' eyes move. He lifts his chin up a little, turns his head to the right just slightly, and looks at Lydia.

She looks back and seems kind of stunned.

Stiles just looks tired.

He turns his head and Scott can feel tears welling up in his eyes. He doesn't want to cry, not here, not again. Stiles looks at him and then fidgets around at the hem of the leather jacket.

Scott is overwhelmed.

Then Stiles' eyes shift to Allison, and his hand stills. His gaze dips and then freezes on the floor again.

"Stiles?" Lydia asks quietly.

He doesn't respond, but that's nothing new.

And then Isaac and Chris are next to him again, and Isaac immediately takes his hand like a little kid, and Chris clutches to his arm again, eyes a little red.

"Wait," Allison says. Her eyes are red too. "Can I... talk to Stiles? Alone?"

They let her. They leave.

The second the door closes, Scott gets uneasy. They're not in view anymore, which means something could go wrong, something could happen, something very bad could happen and he isn't there to help. He thinks she's gonna bleed out in his arms again, and when he closes his eyes, he can smell her blood, and his heart speeds up and he's so, so ultimately terrified.

Scott thinks he might need help.


	2. get well soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stiles and allison talk. well, actually- allison talks and understands why stiles doesn't.

Stiles looks like he's dying.

There is no way to put it more gently. There is literally no other way to put it at all.

Allison looks at him and nearly doesn't recognize him. He looks so hollow, so frayed, so tired. His eyes are fixated on his floor, and he really doesn't say a single word while Isaac and her dad cry.

Then her dad, Isaac, Lydia and Scott leave. The door closes with a quiet clicking sound.

Allison doesn't want it to be silent. She doesn't want Stiles to suffer any more than he already has. She doesn't want to set him on edge with being silent, but she doesn't know what to say. Or, how to say what she wants to get out desperately.

She gestures at the empty chairs next to her bed. "Come on, sit down."

She hates how careful her voice is. Stiles could misinterpret it as her distrusting him, watching what she says to him. She just doesn't want to hurt him. It does feel like he is a frightened animal. Her voice automatically goes soft and cautious.

If he does misinterpret it, she can't see it in his blank expression. That's something that bugs her. Stiles' face is a pretty open display of his emotions. Or was. She doesn't like how empty he looks now. She can't read him at all.

He moves. The reaction is a better reassurement than every word could ever be. He sits down, and she notices with relief he chooses the chair closer to her, even though it's plastic trash and looks super uncomfortable. He still doesn't look at her, but she feels ultimately better and more confident in herself. As small as a gesture it is, it makes her feel like she can somehow get through to him.

Still, Stiles is somewhere else; somewhere she can't quite reach, and she wants to so much it hurts. She wants him to know that she doesn't blame him, that she vigorously forgives him, but she doesn't know how to get there, how to tell him in a way he'd actually acknowledge.

Allison takes a deep breath and then she does something she hasn't done in a long time: she lets herself be vulnerable.

She's strong. She's not weak. She knows she has to understand showing emotions doesn't equal being weak, but she hasn't really got that up until now. Ahe drilled strength into her and it made her so much better, so she kept it up.

She's been trying to keep it together the whole tlme since she woke up, even when Scott and Lydia were clearly messed up. Now she finally lets it be, lets her emotions show on her face and lets everything beneath her words speak louder than she can on her own.

Her voice shakes with relief, fear and happiness all at once when she says, "H-Hey, Stiles."

His gaze flickers up to her face and then drops back down immediately again. She can't read him anymore. It's like he's a different person. She wants him to be alright again so desperately. She wants her Stiles back, the one that always had a joke to lighten the mood, the one that wouldn't stop talking at times, the one that smiled and pretended to be alright even in the darkest places.

She blinks through the tears blurring her sight. She misses that Stiles already, but it doesn't seem like he's ever coming back.

"S-Scott told me you aren't really doing okay. I- I just need- to tell you I don't blame you, yeah? I really don't." Allison sniffs quietly and wipes her eyes. "I- don't get me wrong. I- I don't want to say this _wasn't_ traumatic. I mean, I- I almost died. B-but not because of you, you understand? You're not- _guilty_."

When she looks at Stiles again, he's looking back at her. It's overwhelming how utterly and completely bland his expression is. There really is nothing in his eyes that indicates he's ever going to be the old Stiles again. And worse, nothing in his eyes indicates he believes her.

His eyes are bloodshot. He looks tired, sort of. They stare at each other, and Stiles' mouth twitches, like he wants to say something. 

But then he doesn't. He only reaches for her hand, slowly, and takes it.

He's ice cold. She shivers at his touch, and then cups his hand with hers in an attempt to warm him.

He leans forward and kisses her knuckles.

The action is so soft, so tender, Allison chokes out a quiet sob; she wants to hug him so badly. The only reason she doesn't is because it would probably fuck up her stab wound, and she wants that to heal and be gone as fast as possible. Stiles buries his nose in her hand, closing his eyes, and stays silent.

She continues to cry all the stress out that she's been forcing down since she woke up, Stiles a quiet, comforting presence beside her. She almost died. She couldn't have beared it if she died. She wants to live, she's a kid, for Christ's sake. She's traumatized and scarred and she is crying on Stiles because he knows the feeling.

When she's calming down a little bit again, she lets go of Stiles' hand and cups his cheeks with hers. He looks at her tiredly, and she surveys him. All the moles are the same. His hair is a mess, he should cut it. He's not smiling and not talking, but he's still there. He's still fighting.

Allison _admires_ Stiles. She admires him and loves him so dearly it hurts. She holds that boy in front of her close to her heart, with all of his traumas and expressionless glances and messy clothes. Even though he's this cold and different now, she admires that he's still up on his feet. Still there for her when she needs him too.

True sibling bonding experience, to be honest. Who would've thought a chaos demon could prompt that?

"You're so strong, you know," she whispers. "I can't even begin to imagine what you went through. What you still continue to go through. And you're still here, comforting me, who went through much less."

Stiles shakes his head.

Surprised at his movement and reaction to her words, she doesn't comprehend him lightly tapping her hand until he mouths something.

_Strong too._

He lightly taps her shoulder and mouths it again when she only stares at him, and adoration wells up in Allison when she finally gets that he's _disagreeing_ with her. He's trying to say that she went through equally as much as he did, and that she shouldn't put herself down in order to make him feel better about himself.

It's kind of awesome how much Allison can read out of his simple movements.

She slings her arms around his shoulder and hugs him. Stiles leans forward immediately and rests his head on her shoulder, trying to keep her in place and her injury well as best as possible. He's such an angel.

"Thank you," she says shakingly.

Stiles is stiff in her embrace, like he doesn't know what to do with it. He turns his head and Allison reaches up to card a hand through his hair absently, allowing herself to enjoy the moment. It feels like he's warming up a little. He isn't so cold anymore.

"You're not gonna talk," she mumbles. It's a conclusion, sort of. A statement, not a question. She doesn't doubt it, not for one second. Stiles shakes his head a little, trying not to make her uncomfortable. She asks herself how he's still standing, why he's still trying to take care of her in some way.

"Don't want to?"

He shakes his head again and seperates himself from her. He holds a finger to his lips and gestures to his temple briefly. Overwhelmed. Too many thoughts. Too much going on. No way to express what goes through his head at the impossible speed he tends to think with.

"Too much."

He nods at her words vehemently, more life in him than before. The sight of him vigorously nodding and agreeing with her, engaging in their little one-sided conversation instead of just sitting there lethargically, is so weirdly calming. Allison wants to laugh, hysterically.

Stiles doesn't go back to hugging her. She doesn't blame him. Touch is probably weird for him.

"My god," she mumbles, "we have issues, don't we?"

Stiles' lips tug upwards slightly. That does make her happy. It's not a smile, but already more than she bargained for, more than she expected. Better than the blankness.

"We all need therapy," she concludes. Scott comes back into her mind, completely deflated, trying to keep it together so desperately just like Lydia, just like her.

Stiles frowns deeply. He looks up at the ceiling and then back at the door. Allison guesses he's also thinking about them. How he's doing that and not crying hysterically right now completely goes over Allison's head.

"How are you doing this?" she asks him quietly. "Scott and Isaac are messes. Lydia is gonna break under the pressure she puts herself under if she doesn't release it soon. Even my dad cried. You're- you're-"

She can't say it. While she's still talking, she realizes Stiles isn't doing better than them. He isn't okay. He's _talkative_ right now for his new standards, and he hasn't said a single word so far. She doesn't even know what caused him to speak to her when he hasn't even talked to his dad, according to Lydia. He's a mess too, and he's so different he can't even express what's going on in his head.

His lips tug upwards for a split second again and he takes her hand, presses it against his chest. His heart is beating, and it's beating way too fast. She can feel her own heartbeat speeding up at it, and the electrical device monitoring it next to her beeps faster until it settles in time with her realization.

Stiles isn't alright in the slightest.

He doesn't believe that he's not guilty.

He's just happy to see her well.

It breaks her heart, kind of.

She leans forward to the best of her abilities and presses a kiss onto his forehead. She tries to put as much as her emotions into the gesture as she can, all of her adoration and desperation and the blank fear he won't understand how sorry she is for what happened to him.

"Please," she whispers, "don't destroy yourself over this, okay? I'd get pissed if you would."

Stiles just looks at her. She can't read him. She doesn't like how blank his face is, devoid of any emotions, but that's him now. She'll have to deal.

"Are you gonna be alright?"

Stiles shakes his head.

"No?"

No.

"Not... ever?"

He shakes his head again.

Allison almost groans in annoyance at herself. He's went through something so traumatic he can't even find the words to express it. He can't even be vocal about it, which is an essential part of Stiles, and who he is as a person. Of course he isn't gonna be alright.

"But you'll be better."

Now he nods. The motion is so slow Allison understands a deeper meaning of it. Again, she internally marvels at how much she can read out of his movements. It's a good counter for his expression, which doesn't give things away like it used to.

"Eventually."

Another nod.

Yeah. Yeah, she will deal.

She breathes out a shaky breath she wasn't aware she was holding and pulls him closer again. He rests his head in the crook of her elbow and she buries her nose in his hair. She doesn't let the hug last long. He's stiff in her embrace anyway.

"I'm glad," she tells him when they seperate again. "I'm so relieved you're here."

Stiles taps her shoulder. He doesn't need to say anything to reciprocate the feeling of deep friendship and adoration she expresses with the best of her abilities. It bugs her that he still believes himself to be guilty of all of this. It bugs her that he still doesn't talk.

But her stab wound also bugs her, and she can't really do anything about that either except waiting and getting better.

Time heals all wounds, they say. Allison thinks her pack is going to test that out.

They stay silent. Stiles' gaze dips down to his shoes again – he's wearing weird orange-blue sneakers. Lydia would probably be disgusted at them if she were here right now. The colors are neon and bright and shrill.

Allison isn't tense at him looking away from her. She figures he probably can't stop thinking about what the nogitsune did. That's also most definitely the reason why he doesn't talk either. It did steal his face and voice after all, and she couldn't look at Derek for a long time either after she found out what Kate did to him and his family.

Stiles can't stop thinking about what happened. Looking at her would only make it worse, and even though the guilt is superfluous, it's there and she wants to spare him from as much agony as she can.

"You should talk to your dad," she says suddenly. He looks at her again, but only briefly. A quick eyebrow raise and she corrects herself.

"Uh. Talk. You know what I mean. Your equivalent to talking. And not just your dad. Scott too. And everybody."

Stiles shrugs. He taps his throat and closes his eyes.

"You... can't?"

He nods and mouths, _doesn't sound like me_.

"You can't talk because..." Realization dawns on Allison suddenly and she has to keep herself from clasping a hand over her mouth in shock. It isn't just the memories. He doesn't talk because he's afraid that they'll freak out. He's afraid that he'll sound and look and be so much like that thing that everyone will hate him.

"Oh, Stiles," she whispers. "They won't. They won't resent you."

He shrugs again. _You can't tell me that for sure,_ the motion seems to say.

He's grown to resent _himself_ , Allison thinks.

She takes his hand.

Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely warmer than he was before. That gives her more confidence in herself again. Ups and downs. They're falling apart at the seams. She's so unbelievably glad she isn't alone in this.

"I'm not gonna rush you," she says softly. "You need time. You're traumatized. You're gonna get there eventually, I just know it. You're strong."

Stiles just looks at her tiredly. He pulls his hand out of hers and taps her shoulder.

You too.

She smiles sadly. "Can you tell my dad to come in here? I want to talk to him."

He nods. Gets up.

Allison wishes she'd be more well-spoken. She wishes she could express how much his little gestures, his nods and head-shakes and gentle touches mean to her. She wishes she could express how much he means to her, and how much she wants him to understand that this isn't his fault.

She calls out, "Stiles?"

He turns, hand on the door handle already.

"Come back, okay?"

His lips twitch. He nods one last time.

Then he's out the door.


	3. d'you want coffee?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> derek meets stiles in his loft after the talk at the hospital. nightmares happen.
> 
> (and yes i wrote peter into this but didn't have him make an appearance solely because i wanted him to witness The Sterek Fluff™)
> 
> (and also yes i described stiles as a blob in this chapter. don't @ me)

When Derek closes his door to the loft, he doesn't realize Stiles is there.

As dumb as it is, he really doesn't. He listens lazily and only hears Peter's familiar heartbeat upstairs, he inhales and doesn't smell anyone or anything else than him, his uncle, and Isaac. It's warm in the loft, a nice contrast to the cold air outside, and Derek sighs wearily. It's good to be home.

He locks the door, hangs up his jacket, walks into the kitchen, drinks a glass water, then he goes to get himself a good book and then, when he moves to sit down in his reading chair in the living room, _that's_ when he spots him.

The werewolf freezes up momentarily, nostrils widening, and _then_ he hears Stiles' heartbeat; weirdly loud and uncharacteristically slow and regulated. He inhales and smells Stiles all over his place, cinnamon and cigarettes and a complete mess.

Derek really has to get used to the fact that Stiles is so unbelievably silent now that he literally can't sense him.

He also really has to get used to the fact that Stiles keeps showing up in his loft even though the werewolf is pretty sure he never gave him a key.

He is sitting on Derek's couch and staring at the TV. He does that a lot.

His eyes flicker over the screen like he's watching an interesting movie.

The TV is never on.

Derek stands there for a couple of minutes and just takes him in. He's wearing a ridiculous amount of varying clothing articles on top of each other. His hair is standing into every direction. The sun that's going down steadily is highlighting the dark bruises on his slightly swollen throat perfectly. The leather jacket he's wearing belongs to Derek himself. He has no idea when he stole that from the loft.

He only heard that he tried to strangle himself in his sleep from Isaac. He knows Stiles went with them to visit Allison today, but that was hours ago already.

Derek looks down at his book.

It doesn't tell him what to do.

Damn book. Can't even talk.

He ends up choosing the most simple option that somehow feels a lot harder than it should; he walks over to the couch and sits down next to the lethargic teenager. The covers of the cushions rustle quietly beneath him as he rests against them, close enough to Stiles for touch, but still giving him space.

Somehow it makes him nervous to sit next to him like this. Stiles makes him nervous, but he'd never admit that. He's kind of scary, but he'd never admit that either.

But if he's being honest with himself, it's not Stiles he's scared of, and it'll never be him. It's the nogitsune, the demon that stole his face, his voice, his entire being. Stiles walks like a dangerous creature now, his eyes are empty and his heartbeat is inaudible at times, and he's scary even when he's not trying to be.

Derek knows he's not trying to be.

He opens his book and begins to read.

For a while, the sound of Derek turning the pages is the only sound, aside from their combined heartbeats and breathing. He thinks Peter is reading too, upstairs in his room. He probably let Stiles in. Or maybe he didn't, he can't tell.

Derek hates that Stiles isn't talking.

For all the times he's told him to shut up, he hates it when he actually does. _Quite the hipocrisy,_ his uncle had said when he expressed his discomfort upon Stiles' silence. That was when they still thought he was going to talk again. That was days ago.

"Isaac told me you went to the hospital," he says quietly. It's somehow way too loud in the silence. Stiles blinks and leaves it at that.

No reaction besides it, but that's nothing new.

"I'm proud of you, do you know that?" he asks Stiles. Peter would probably scold him for growing soft if he were downstairs. And Derek would probably punch his lights out for it. "I'm pretty sure I couldn't have brought up the courage to go there. You're very brave, Stiles."

Stiles' wildly flickering gaze comes to a stop and he moves; he tugs at the leather jacket he's wearing briefly. It's a simple movement, so brief and fast; movement that shows struggle, deep internal conflict. Derek prides himself on being able to read people without having to use his supernatural senses, something that is of little to no use now because Stiles is so completely blank.

It's quiet again. Derek waits for a reaction, but Stiles only keeps his hands fisted in the leather jacket, knuckles white. His jaw is clenched, but Derek doesn't know why. He's glaring, although the werewolf isn't sure at what.

Derek slowly reaches out to place a hopfeully comforting hand on Stiles' shoulder. He's never been good with feelings; but then again, neither has the teenager next to him.

"It's not your fault," he says. "You should know that."

Stiles turns his head to look at him.

His glare, now directed at Derek, is so venomous the werewolf takes his hand off of him like a startled, scared little animal.

Stiles soundlessly sneers at him, the expression is pronounced with disgust. Derek doesn't want to, doesn't mean to, but for some reason his instincts are telling him to get the fuck away from him before he attacks Derek- but this is Stiles. Stiles is incapable of hurting people in more than one way. His only weapon, which he claimed to be sarcasm in the past, is yet to make a reappearance due to his lack of speech.

Still, involuntarily, Derek backs away from him and hopes Stiles somehow misses the movement and how unbelievably relieving it feels.

Stiles' expression clearly states that he saw it and is not very happy about it.

Great. Now he thinks Derek _is_ afraid of him.

Stiles looks away again, jaw working. Derek looks at the swing of it and takes a moment to admire just how insanely beautiful Stiles really is; he always was, now in the way only destroyed things are. Then, he forbids himself those thoughts for the sake of their everything and works to resolve the issue that just popped up.

Derek scoots closer to the still glaring teenager even though for some reason every single nerve in his body screams that he's dangerous and slings his arms around him. Stiles immediately goes stiff in his embrace, but that's nothing new. That's got nothing to do with their situation here.

The werewolf waits until the sense of danger slowly starts to fade away. It doesn't. He listens to himself.

Why the hell is his wolf suddenly responding to angry Stiles like that? It never ducked away from him like that before. It feels like it's sort of mad at Derek for not listening to it, like it's seriously worried that he will attack them. It doesn't make sense.

It's watching every single movement of Stiles, alerted and on edge.

Derek tells it to stick its fear of Stiles up its hairy ass.

Stiles, who is currently looking at him in an emotion Derek immediately recognizes.

Guilt.

Abruptly, his wolf switches back. It's confused, like it doesn't know why it responded like that either. Derek is discombobulated.

Stiles' lips stretch into a smile. It looks acrimonious, albeit a bit sad. 

Derek hates how much he can say without talking.

 _Don't be proud of me,_ his bitter smile seems to say. _Not when you're afraid of me._

Then, his expression falls again, but not to be replaced by emptiness. Stiles looks tired instead. Tired, weary, just straight up exhausted. The emotion pulls his lips downwards a little, darkens his eyes, makes him look older. It moves his entire face, and Derek can't help but stare at him, completely riveted by the way his face shifts.

Stiles looks like he's going to say something, but then he doesn't.

He scoots closer to Derek, tucks his knees up under his chin. He's wearing socks that don't match, one is plain grey and the other is striped red and black. Stiles rests his head on Derek's shoulder and the werewolf slings his arms around him in anticipation of him going stiff in his embrace again.

Instead, Stiles snuggles impossibly closer until Derek has two armful of traumatized teenager and he basically breathes into Stiles' hair.

They're cuddling.

Yes. This is... happening. Derek is not freaking out at all. 

It's nice, kind of.

Stiles is silent, and Derek feels some tension from the past weeks leave him. He breathes in cinnamon and cigarettes deeply, and then allows himself to relax.

He isn't stiff in his arms. Derek suddenly feels like he can't breathe. Tears well up in his eyes and his sight blurs, and he blinks harshly to prevent them running over his cheeks. He is so relieved all of the sudden, so unbelievably alleviated; he feels like the weight of the sky has been lifted from his shoulders.

Stiles is here, in his arms, not completely emotionless, not completely indifferent to touch and warmth. It's such a small thing, but it's so unbelievably facilitating to Derek; maybe Stiles isn't gonna stay like this forever. Maybe they've got a chance to make things better, or to make things the best. He deeply, utterly hopes so.

He holds Stiles like this for what feels like hours. The teenager stares at the TV again, and Derek catches his eyes falling closed a couple of times, but he always pries them back open.

The werewolf enjoys his company, silent or not; he would still prefer him babbling mindlessly about whatever topic he suddenly decided to find interesting, or cussing about his dad's eating habits, or singing some Taylor Swift song to annoy everyone, but he takes what he can get.

The sun goes down and the moon up, and somewhere between eleven and twelve o'clock, Stiles' head lolls off of Derek's shoulder. The werewolf catches him before he falls off the couch and tucks his head in under his chin.

Stiles' breath is cold against his throat. His nose is cold too. His skin can't seem to get warmer and Derek doesn't know why it is that way.

He looks better in his sleep. His lips are slightly parted, he looks peaceful. All signs of weariness are gone, his face is relaxed and free of stress.

Stiles' youth strikes Derek with a sudden brutality. He's just barely eighteen. For god's sake. He's gone through things- things so terrible, so unbelievably and unmitigatedly gruesome, that no one, no person in this universe, should ever go through. It's easy to forget that he's barely an adult, given how suddenly mature he's presented himself ever since he got out of his own mind.

Derek shakingly traces the moles on Stiles' neck with his fingers and silently vows to protect him. He presses a silent kiss on his hair and wishes he could forget watching his own hands tying Chris Argent to a chair, and hearing his own voice say cruel things that are completely insane, and deep down thinking that he's doing the right thing; he wishes he could forget vicious laughter and amber eyes so cold he wakes up freezing, he wishes he could forget the nogitsune.

Stiles has a scar on his stomach now. It's a huge, rubbery, ugly thing, poorly healed. It looks like he tried to disembowel himself. It's going to stay there forever, along with the sigil burnt into the skin behind his ear, along with the scar of Allison's stab wound.

Derek shuts his own eyes tightly and tries to blend out the nogitsune's voice, Stiles' voice, merging together, riling him up, playing on his hatred for the Argent family. He hates how easily it had worked. He hates how he can't distinct the two voices sometimes.

Derek hates how unbelievably harsh the universe is on this beautiful angel lying in his arms. He wishes he could do something, anything, to make Stiles feel better; but when it comes down to it, his experience with the nogitsune may have been bad, but Derek had a little snippet of that thing in his mind. Stiles had the entire monster; destroying his very being, poisoning his thoughts like a deadly disease. Stiles had to watch it plant bombs and traps with his hands, he had to watch it almost kill Scott, he had to watch it taunt his own dad with his voice and his eyes and his body.

He hates that he doesn't know how Stiles is still alive.

He falls asleep. 

-

Derek wakes up to Stiles screaming his lungs out.

The werewolf startles awake in a panic, completely confused and still sleepy, to a horrendous and entirely fucking _terrified_ sound. Stiles sounds like he's faced with a monster (again, again and again) and crying out in complete desperation.

His heartbeat is going rigid, he's sitting upright and his arms spasm before he starts to thrash around, accidentally hitting Derek right in the face.

Hitting Derek right in the face with _momentum_.

His nose breaks with an ugly sound and Derek's head bounces back onto the couch with the sheer force Stiles is flailing around with. The pain is enough to bring him back from his sleepy state, right into reality; and Stiles is still screaming, screaming and crying.

Derek slings his arms around him in an attempt to keep him still, and Stiles just screams even louder. He sobs out, " _No!_ No, I _can't_ , I can't, I don't know, _I don't know!"_

Derek has to keep his claws in check so he won't ruin his leather jacket and all the fabric underneath. His eyes glow bright blue and he restrains Stiles' thrashing limbs, curls his legs around him and holds his arms still. Stiles shakes in his grip and spasms against his firm hold.

He cries, "Please, _please_ , I can't- I don't know the answer, _please_ don't hurt them, please, I'm _begging_ you!"

 _"Stiles!"_ Derek more or less roars. Stiles spasms, again and again, before the tension finally seeps out of his body and he slumps in Derek's arms, sobbing.

The werewolf hugs him tightly, holding him so he can hear Derek's heartbeat. It's too fast, but much slower than Stiles' own- and slowly, ever so slowly, the younger one of the two of them starts to calm down. His face is flushed, tears are spilling out of his eyes, and he's full on ugly crying in Derek's arms.

He is terrified for Stiles. Which isn't helping. Because Stiles is terrified too. Derek is slow, but he is somewhat smart enough to listen closely. Peter's heartbeat is nowhere to be heard. He probably headed off to his apartment.

Derek is afraid of letting Stiles go. He lets him cry his heart out, softly whispering reassurements into his hair, stroking his thumbs over his arms. Blood dries under his nose, but he doesn't dare let go of his broken human to dash it away. Holy shit, Stiles is a lot stronger than he'd anticipated with the state he is in currently. He broke Derek's nose with _feeling_.

The werewolf doesn't make a damn lick of sense right now. He thinks he might be crying a little too. He has no idea what to do.

_Isaac told him Stiles has horrible nightmares. Does he always wake up screaming?_

It takes a long time before Stiles' broken sobs turn into silent crying, and then a little sniffling, and then he finally goes still. Derek doesn't dare to say a word, asking himself if Stiles maybe fell asleep again with exhaustion.

But then Stiles shifts in his grip and taps his arms. Surprised, Derek lets go, giving the human one second that he promptly uses to shuffle out of his arms and fall from the couch onto the floor. The crashing noise, accompanied by squeaking leather and rustling fabric is loud in Derek's ears.

Uhm.

Ouch.

That sounded like it hurt.

Stiles is staring at the ceiling. His eyes are bloodshot. His expression is completely and utterly empty.

Derek gets a little hysterical. Stiles is lying. On his floor.

It's ridiculous.

He looks out of the window and finds the sky looking dark grey. It must be somehwere around four in the morning.

He says the first thing that comes to his mind.

"Do you want coffee?"

Stiles doesn't look at him from his blob-position on the floor.

He just nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are appreciated. have a great day, yall. :)


	4. this goddamn town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the sheriff is so done with beacon hills. also, the plot finally ensues.

_God_ , it's one of these days.

John Stilinski had awoken in the middle of the night (more precisely, between one and two o'clock in the morning) to the sound of his only son screaming his lungs out. By the time he was fully aware of what was going on and barging into Stiles' room, he'd found a completely horrifying scene.

Stiles had both of his hands wrapped around his throat, and he was clenching them so hard his knuckles were turning white. His face was already turning blue, his eyes dangerously near closing, and the sheriff had yanked his hands off of his throat at literal supersonic speed.

A disastrous start for a disastrous day.

Neither of the Stilinskis could sleep after that, and John didn't work in the station anyways (he got a sorta-vacation, which means he's just doing paperwork from home), so he just held his son as tight as possible, two icepacks wrapped around his swelling throat, and had mumbled shaky promises of safety and comfort into Stiles' hair.

Stiles hadn't replied, and he'd avoided eye contact with him furiously, but that was nothing new.

Eventually, his son moves to get up. Stiles has to have a remarkably fantastic sense of time, because it is six in the morning on the second when they go into the kitchen.

The bruises don't really look like they are going to cause any permanent damage, but John still calls Melissa over to check on Stiles. He begs her not to tell Scott and put more weight on that poor kid's back, and she promises.

The sheriff is under the serious impression Scott is actually going to collapse under all of this.

Paperwork is boring. As always, sooner rather than later today, Stiles joins him in his office, eyes glued onto the carpet. He takes the unspoken invite from his father and sits down next to him, continuing his daily drawing. Today, he's drawing a crow for some reason. Stiles is quite talented at drawing realistic things, but ever since he got out of his own mind he'd retreated back into his impulsive, abstract artstyle that he'd settled for when he was still a kid with too much on his mind and trouble expressing it.

John doesn't mind, though. Back then, drawing had been the only thing where Stiles could sit still, focused on his work for hours at times. Now, a little bit of his old self seems to come back to him when he scrawls chaotic lines onto the paper, the sheriff catches him making faces at his drawings at times, like he's just unbelievably frustrated with how they turn out.

Stiles hasn't really picked up the hobby drawing again ever since Claudia died. That was one thing they always shared, their love for oil paint and brushes and pencils. His wife always had some paint smear on her somewhere, and she would complain about her stained clothes endlessly but then still wear them in the end.

Ironically, Stiles reminds him less of her every day now. It used to freak him out, how much he looked like her when she was younger. They've really got a lot of issues.

His son stops scribbling around and changing details somewhere around lunchtime, and he still looks unsatisfied with his work as he shows it to John, but at least he looks like something and isn't retreating back into himself again.

The drawing of the crow is beautiful, and he tells Stiles as such, but his son only frowns at him lightly. There is something soft in his eyes, and that makes the sheriff feel more content than he has in weeks.

While Stiles makes lunch, Isaac and Chris swing by. It's familiar, the two of them just keep visiting the two Stilinskis, and Isaac almost immediately starts to talk about something, but then he notices the bruises on Stiles' throat and stops short.

"Jesus Christ," the hunter picks up on them as well, eyes widening in light shock, "what happened to you? Who did that?"

The second question is directed more towards John than Stiles, who suddenly seems to find the spaghetti he's making vastly interesting. But then again, he's been staring at them for a while now, so the sheriff isn't reading much into that.

John wishes he'd have any other explanation for the dark bruises on Stiles' throat, black and purple and lighter grey at the edges, clearly shaping two hands. He still tells them what happened and is left to deal with their absolutely horrified expressions alone.

Isaac starts to babble about something before they can all start to sulk, though, and snuggles a bit close to Stiles, but his son continues to stir the spaghetti and occasionally nod or shrug to ensure to Isaac he's listening.

Chris asks him about his work, he always does, and John always tells him. He's tired of Beacon Hills and its consistent inner need to mess up his kids, and Chris deeply understands that.

The day doesn't get much better. They eat lunch, Stiles barely so. Chris and Isaac stay, and the two teenagers go upstairs into Stiles' room, leaving the two adults to chatter about sweet nonsense as they carefully avoid certain subjects and discuss therapy grandly.

They do every day, and Chris is pretty confident in the fact that they'll muster up the money for proper treatment for everyone, somehow. John is less optimistic, but that's just his persona.

They bicker like a married couple at times.

He doesn't really care if he's being honest with himself.

Somewhere in the afternoon, Stiles leaves Isaac alone upstairs for a minute or two, strolling downstairs to get the werewolf some snacks, and Isaac freaks out and calls Lydia. That results in Lydia telling Isaac that he should tell Stiles Allison is awake, and then Isaac does exactly that, and Stiles clutches to his arms, eyes wide and breathing irregular, and mindlessly mouths that he has to see her over and over.

It's pure confusion.

So, Isaac tells Lydia they're bringing Stiles.

His son is a shaking mess when they come downstairs, and as soon as Chris gets what's going on, Stiles has barely the time to wrap himself in a leather jacket that John is pretty sure belongs to Derek Hale before the two basically drag him off.

The sheriff is left alone.

First off, rude.

Secondly, _okay_ , because when Stiles comes back, he's _better_.

Only Isaac is with him now, and he's just there to drop him off, pressing a light kiss to his forehead and saying his goodbyes again.

Stiles stands there for a short while.

Then he turns to John and hugs the living crap out of him.

The sheriff is pleasantly surprised when Stiles slings his arms around him tightly and buries his nose in his father's shoulder like he's a little kid again, holding onto him with his dear life, and really, what else can he do but hug him back, rubbing over his concerningly sharp shoulder blades in support.

They stay like that for a while. John doesn't really mind two armful of his son. Stiles moves and mouths _Hey_ at him, and the sheriff beams.

"Hey, Stiles," he smiles softly. "How are you?"

Stiles shrugs. He raises his hand to tap his temple, then the bags under his eyes.

"Tired?"

 _Exhausted_.

He nods. Understandable.

Something about him is different now that he's seen Allison; maybe it's just his imagination, really, but Stiles seems more lively, his eyes aren't so empty anymore. Also, hugs and shrugging and mouthing words and the sheriff is happy.

Or as happy as it gets.

His son goes back up to his room, and John goes back to his paperwork.

And that's when Beacon Hills decides to screw everything over, yet again.

John gets the call exactly at 04:27 PM, and he writes the date down for later, because, well. It's kind of important when you find someone who got decapitated in her very own flat.

It's a pretty ugly crime scene.

Chloe Hallace lives – or, more accurately, lived – on the third floor of an apartment complex in the more cheapish part of Beacon Hills. The building is owned by a guy named Terrence Anderson, a gangly ginger guy with a slight stutter that pales every time a police officer talks to him and sweats a lot. Nervosity is frowned upon a lot in interrogations, but Terry (as his friends call him) has a pretty cast-iron alibi. He was seen by at least fifteen people on the birthday party of his goddaughter in the timeframe of the murder.

The people who live in the slightly derelict flats next door didn't hear or see anything, which is weird considering how, quote-unquote fifty-six year old man from the flat right next to Chloe's, "unbelievably thin the walls are". The fact that they have no leads at all, because Chloe apparently kept to herself and didn't have a lot of friends and no enemies, is kind of pesky.

The apartment itself is... interesting.

Meaning, it looks completely all over the place.

Books are torn out of their respective shelves and scattered across the floor, with broken spines and ripped out pages. Drawers are wide open, their contents all over their floor. It looks like somebody furiously searched for something- and then Chloe had interrupted, because blood is everywhere. Literally everywhere, it's splattered all over the mess that had obviously been there first.

An interrupted burglary, followed by a brutal murder? Sadly not very uncommon.

But there's a very big detail that derails that theory.

Someone smeared a message down on the floor.

With Chloe's blood.

Also, her head is missing.

Which.. wow.

Pictures of the message are taken (it looks like a runic script of some sort, nothing that anyone would be able to read in this century and that would probably take a crapload of time before they had a proper, useful translation), and the body is taken to the morgue. The police need to contact Chloe's family, make a DNA test (just to be sure it's actually her, because, well, _her_ _head is missing_ ), John needs to set up a file and do more paperwork and interrogate more people and much more.

Murders are real crap. They're exhausting.

The flat gets closed off, the door is locked. It's an official crime scene. Deputy Parrish takes care of eventual press coverage, and John calls home.

Which is stupid, now that he thinks about it, because Stiles won't talk, but he calls him anyways.

It rings two times before he answers.

"Hey, kiddo," the sheriff sighs. "There's been an ugly murder down in that apartment complex in Grimmick's Street. You know, the one that looks like it's gonna fall apart any second. I'm gonna be out long and investigate, and I don't really want you home alone the entire night, okay? Go to Derek's, I'm sure he'll give you dinner and let you sleep there."

He listens, but Stiles only breathes at the other end of the line. Then his son makes a humming noise.

Sounds like agreement.

"Okay, then. See you tomorrow. I love you, Stiles."

Stiles hums again. John smiles softly.

Then he hangs up.

This is a terrible day, for Christ's sake. He better get going, he's got relatives to find (and a head), clues to gather, and a murderer to arrest. There are a lot of questions that need answering, and John suddenly understands why Stiles has a board for this stuff. Everything about this is wildly confusing.

What in the world was this murder about? What had Chloe done that warranted a death like that? What had the murderer been looking for before she ran across him? Why didn't he dispose her body if he already took her head? Why did he take her head at all?

Chloe Hallace died on a Tuesday, it took one day to find her body. Her murderer could already have left town and be long gone.

What was the message for? What language were these runes? And, more importantly, who was the message for if Chloe's relatives apparently didn't have contact with her? Because John didn't see any pictures with her family in them in her apartment. This case is already wild from the start, and it'll probably stay that way to the finish. The chances of actually finding the person who's done this are pretty low considering a day already has passed since the actual murder has occured.

John finally gets in his car and buckles up before starting it. He's got work to do.

This goddamn town, man. No higher entity has any kind of sense for mercy on it. It's like Beacon Hills is cursed, and considering everything that went down lately, the possibility isn't even that inconceivable.

Yeah. _This goddamn town_.


	5. the river

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stiles dissociates.
> 
> he also finds a severed head in a cold river.
> 
> what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated the tags, y'all, but just for the record: 
> 
> There is a suicide attempt in this chapter more or less. It's glossed over for now due to Stiles' state of mind, but will be addressed by several characters in future chapters. He also hurts himself and dissociates heavily. And he finds a severed head which has decomposed a bit. 
> 
> If you find this triggering, don't read the chapter, please. He ends up at the police station, it's gonna get summed up in future chapters. 
> 
> Take care of yourselves, mwah <33

Stiles always loved crimes.

Seriously. Since he'd been a little kid, it was hard not to find him snooping around somewhere, anywhere, and somehow he'd always found trouble one way or another. His mom used to say that trouble found him, but well, he knew it was the other way around. Stiles was a curious kid, and he loved figuring stuff out.

_Red string all tied together and pictures of Eichen House and his chessboard with Derek's name on the king and a game of Go that he always lost against himself but always wins against Noshiko and nothing makes sense when he writes the numbers on the chalkboard and scribbles 'WAKE UP' all over his books and he can't read he can't sleep he can't talk he can't breathe-_

Curiosity killed the cat, right? Curiosity also killed the fox. Sometimes, when Stiles feels like his heart is swelling and bruising black and blue in his too tight chest, he thinks curiosity also killed him in some sort of way. After all, he's the one that started with the search for Laura's other half. Her death was just another crime to him, and there were times where he felt disgusting for that, but most of the time Stiles liked solving cases. He liked getting people the justice they deserved.

_Peter going up in flames and Peter smiling at him and someone saying he isn't a threat and yeah Stiles isn't a threat but then why the fuck did he not hesitate to chuck that molotov cocktail at the werewolf and why doesn't he ever hesitate to threaten people and why is he such a monster but still not a threat-_

It made him feel smart. It made him feel better about the fact that he couldn't concentrate on a page in a boring book without losing focus. Stiles grew up being called stupid by a lot of people, before he had the excuse that was the diagnosis of his ADHD that always seemed to make the very same people feel sorry about the way they treated him.

If you can't concentrate well, you're stupid. 

If you can't concentrate well because you have, as Stiles loved to phrase it, _find focusing with difficulty due to a mental disorder he inherited from his father,_ you're okay.

Stiles hated the world and how unfair it was when he was a kid. The older he got, the better he got at dealing with it.

He didn't stop loving crimes when he got older, though. Riddles, yeah, he fucking despises riddles, but not crimes, never crimes. Crimes are awesome and he loves to solve them.

Or, he should.

There's been a murder just downtown, and instead of investigating and being a reckless asshole like he normally would, he just goes to Derek like his dad instructed him to, has an awful nightmare ( _Scott's blood on their hands and their name on his tongue and their cruel laugh as they feast on something that is so, so satiating)_ , drinks one cup of coffee too much and then leaves again.

He doesn't even care about the girl that died. He doesn't really care about anything these days though, so he supposes it's as horrible as it would be (should be, is).

He can toss and turn all he wants, drink so much coffee the caffeine gives him a damn heart condition, he can bend over backwards trying to pretend he's just more quiet than he used to be, just a little bit more fucked up than he used to be. He can pretend to the end of the world that someday, somehow, he's going to be the normal him again.

The truth is, he is not.

He's never going to be himself again. Not entirely, at the very least.

Stiles' thoughts are too loud in his head, his mind is too empty, his voice too loud in his ears, his hands are too cold and his limbs are constantly in his way, like he's not used to being human, like he isn't supposed to be a human being from the getgo, and his voice, his goddamned voice layers and sounds like the nogitsune in his own ears even though it doesn't to the others, and he thinks he's still crazy.

Maybe he always was crazy. He can't really tell. He's fucked up in one too many ways.

His feet lead him away from Derek's loft and into the forest. He can't remember if the werewolf offered to drive him home, but he knows he walked here yesterday, just before the sun started to go down.

Stiles is _freezing_.

He wishes he could be as nonchalant as Malia about the fact that he can't get warm anymore. He hasn't thought about her in the past days, but he hates how unfair he was to her and how bad he was to her. She deserves better than him, he almost got her killed. Maybe she doesn't really care about him. How in the fuck would he know? He doesn't see her. It's not like they are besties just because they slept with each other once.

He wishes she would be his bestie. He thinks she would make a radical one. He misses Allison even though she's awake and he misses Scott even though he's just one call away. His feet lead him away, away into some abandoned part of Beacon Hills.

His thoughts are so loud. They make his head hurt. Stiles just wants to sleep, forever, and maybe never wake up again, because god his mind is so empty and it's so horrible and Stiles is so broken. Shattered glass rests inside of his heart, and the splinters hurt every time he breathes, and _he knows he doesn't deserve to he almost killed Scott he remembers trying to murder him and he remembers slumping against a wall unconsciously while Allison almost died and he remembers he wasn't there when Aiden almost died he doesn't deserve to feel the pain breathing brings him because he doesn't fucking deserve to breathe-_

Wait, when did he get to a river?

He's dizzy. He wishes he wouldn't be. He wishes he would be a defenseless human being with power and no sense of self-preservation that is no threat, not dangerous at all. He wishes his mind wouldn't feel wrong, like something is missing.

Stiles' mind used to overflow with the most useless shit, his focus all over the place, his attention span not even in the double-digits if you counted in seconds. Now, it's like his fucking ADHD just got cured.

Stiles tries not to think about the subtle stench that he felt in his right arm when Scott bit his horrifying doppelganger. He tries not to think of Erica's cured epilepsy. He tries not to think of anything, really, because he feels like his mind has too much room now, because his thoughts aren't supposed to be unshared anymore.

_Yeah, they are, they are, they are they are they are what in God's name is wrong with him-_

He's at a river. He glances down at his fingers and counts eight, nine, ten of them. He looks at the dark, murky water. He doesn't know where he is, but when he looks around, he can only see dilapidated, old buildings, empty apartment complexes that are decaying.

He does know where he is. He's in the left bottom corner of Beacon Hills, basically, if he were to imagine the town in a square. Holy Christ, he walked a long way. Derek's loft is like three miles away.

He looks at the grey water again. Something about it irks him, but he doesn't know what.

He's freezing.

He starts to walk along the river. If he follows it upwards, it'll lead him back into the forest at some point. The sun is already up, it's got to be six or maybe even seven in the morning already. His phone is turned off and thus unreachable when he digs into the pockets of the leather jacket he kind of stole from Derek. His dad must be worried sick.

Stiles wants to go home and hide from the image in the mirror again, and he wants to kiss Derek maybe because his coffee is really good, and he wants to punch something repeatedly until his hands are bleeding, but nothing of that really is worth his energy or time, so he stays put.

The water flows sluggishly. He wonders how cold it is. He wonders, if he would jump, how long it would take his friends to find his body.

He drops his phone on the ground and takes a step closer, weirdly fascinated by the thought. It's so loud in his head. He can't talk without hearing a demon. He can't sleep without killing his friends.

Stiles reaches up and wraps a hand around his throat, presses the bruises until the pain makes tears well up in his eyes. His sight blurs, and he likes to imagine it's from blood loss, he likes to imagine that he pushed that katana into his stomach and disemboweled himself like he should have, but no.

No, he's a fucking coward.

He blinks the tears away and drops his hand back to his side. It dangles there uselessly, limply. His hands used to move all the time, fidgeting for extra concentration or just wildly flailing, making a point, underlining something, exaggerating, annoying. Now they're just still, like his head is, like he is, like everything is.

Another step closer to the water.

His sneakers sink into the mud there. It's disgustingly oozy, and his feet make a loud squishing noise when he takes another step, into the water.

It's cold. At least he thinks it is. He only feels it from far away. He only feels everything from far away.

Did he really hug his dad just this afternoon? He told him he loved him. Stiles doesn't understand that. How can anyone still love him after everything he's done? Everyone he hurt and everyone he killed?

Another step. Another one.

The cold makes his legs numb, but he just stares at the water absently.

It reaches to his thighs when his foot smacks against something.

Stiles stops.

His heart is beating so slowly and his chest is so tight. It hurts. The glass shards embedded into it should make him bleed, he should bleed as payment for all the pain he took. His legs are so cold, but he can barely feel it over the feeling of absent wonder. One emotion, one sensation at a time. He can't take more.

Stiles dips his hand into the water and reaches down to grab whatever he bumped into.

He pulls out Chloe Hallace's head.

It's sheer fucking insanity he doesn't have a breakdown right there and then.

Instead, his thoughts momentarily turn into an absurd commentary of his discovery, because he can't take describing it any other way than a totally horrible attempt at humor.

_Homegirl's been dead for two days now, and it really shows._

Goodbye. He's _so_ going to hell. 

Her skin is already starting to peel off. For unrelated reasons, Stiles knows that in water below 44,6 degree Fahrenheit, bodies and parts of 'em can stay intact for weeks. This proves his theory that even though he can't quite feel it, the water has to be cold, because there is some waxy, slick thing on her cheeks that he recognizes as adipocere, a substance that protects the body (and parts of it) from decomposition. The formation of adipocere is, as Stiles likes to put it, _encouraged_ by cold water.

He thinks maybe his ADHD is still there, because any normal person would've just thought, _Hey, this water is cold._ But then again, normal people don't usually find themselves standing almost waist deep in a freezing cold river holding a cut off head at the disgusting hair.

_Eyes? Nah. She said 'Oh, to see without my eyes' and decomposition took that literally._

Yup. Eternal damnation for him.

After a while it occurs to him he should probably do something. Like, step out of the river and text his dad he found Chloe Hallace's head or something. He stands there, stares at it, stares at it more, and asks himself why he still investigates when he's fucking trying not to.

Perhaps trouble does find him, after all?

Nope. He fished that godfucking head out of the river. He is responsible for this.

He's also gonna be very responsible for the fact that he is so going to get hypothermia.

Yeah. He needs to probably most definitely step out of the water.

Stiles turns around, a ridiculous sense of absurd calmness embedded in his movements, and wades back to where he dropped his phone. His legs instantly start to shake when he steps out of the water, and he picks his phone up.

Chloe's dead eyes are staring at him. He kind of feels like she's judging him from beyond the grave. Which is kind of hysterical considering she hasn't got a grave yet.

"Sorry, Chloe," he mumbles.

It doesn't sound like the nogitsune.

It sounds like him, vaguely. His voice is tight and hoarse and shaking and trembling and dark, but it's his. 

Chloe keeps judging him.

Rude.

His phone makes his next problem, because as it turns out, it's not turned off, it's dead. Empty battery. Stiles wishes his head wouldn't be as empty as the battery while he kind of tries to rearrange Chloe's hair so she doesn't look as disarranged as he probably does. Internally, he's probably more dead than she is, and she's a literal chopped off body part. This is a severed head he's talking to.

Yes. He is insane. He's coming to accept it. Hey, acceptance is always the first step to bettering yourself... am I right?

Again, he needs a while before he figures out he should do something. He wishes he wouldn't be so lethargic. He used to be so smart, and now he's his own enemy and his mind is a terrible PG-18 horror movie with bad jumpscares and too much gore.

That's... actually a really good comparison.

His legs are numb, and he picks Chloe up again. She smells terrible, but he doesn't tell her that. Don't disrespect the dead and all that.

He does tell her he's sorry again, though. Maybe he can talk again now, his voice kind of sounds like him again.

"Sorry I keep doing nothing," he apologizes to the head. "I don't mean to. I'm just fucked up in the head. C'mon, I'll get you to.. the police, I guess."

And that's where he ends up at.

If he's going to look back at it somewhere in an unimaginable future where he's somewhat alright again, he's probably going to laugh at it hysterically. He feels a grand urge to do so now, but he keeps to his _don't disrespect the dead_ rule.

He just walks into the Sheriff's department, lips blue, shaking like a leaf in a storm, his left arm and both of his legs soaked in muddy water that drips onto the carpet, holding a severed head by the hair.

In retrospect, he understands why everyone stared at him for a great deal of time until his dad came out of his office and stared at him for a grand deal of time too.

Stiles shrugs to the best of his abilities.

_Drowning, drowning, Derek's name on the king, Derek's good coffee, he isn't a threat. He is holding a cut off head he randomly found in a river. He was halfway onto commiting suicide. He's drowning, drowning, drowning in his thoughts and the lack of- well, everything. He's drowning, and he wants it to be over already._

"I found Chloe's head," he announces, as if nobody could see the very obvious head dangling from his grip. Her hair is so gross.

Don't disrespect the dead, Stiles, don't, don't, _don't_.


	6. cigarettes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stiles smokes two cigarettes and the sheriff takes him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do yall feel how much background the plot is instead of actual plot? I'm just too lazy to write actual conflicts and investigations, so i'm spending my chapters on the internal conflicts. Anyways, how do we feel about weekly updates or something like that? Is that good?
> 
> also: trigger warning once again because of dissociation, smoking and thoughts of self-harm.
> 
> Take care of yourselves and spread love <33

_Loud_.

Everything is so loud.

He's in the police station, in his dad's office; waiting for something, someone to get back to him. He's answered Deputy Parrish's confusing questions to the best of his abilities even when some of them just sent his mind going empty, and now he's waiting and feeling like he needs to scream, ironically. Everything is drumming into his ears and he feels like they're going to be permanently damaged.

Stiles doesn't know why it is that way. The clock on the wall right next to him ticks obnoxiously loudly, and with every second that passes, everything around him gets louder. The voices, he thinks he hears his dad, and the _electricity_ in the walls, the electricity is so _loud_ and it hurts in his ears. He thinks he hears someone typing something, a keyboard, footsteps, something that sounds like water, but that is impossible, right?

He's just imagining this. He's incapable of hearing this much noise.

But even in his mind, in his imagination, it's so loud. Stiles feels like he's going to break any second under everything. He really needs to cry- anything to get his emotions out, anything so he won't feel this anguish anymore, this conflict that builds up in his fragile body and threatens to shatter him. He can't take it like he could before he lost his mind.

Is this is a sensory overload? He's not really sure, but it distantively feels like it. He's dizzy again, and he doesn't like how clearly he can feel himself slipping into the fog and away from any type of reality again. He's told Parrish he's not sure if any of this is real, and he's still not sure. This could just be a dream. Maybe he never woke up and this is just another hyper-detailed, painful nightmare that he can scream himself awake from when he notices he's sleeping.

He can't breathe.

He's pretty sure he has a panic attack, but really, everything is far too hazy. He hasn't had one of these in years, the ones where it doesn't even show; he's just staring at the clock blandly and his mind is so loud in his ears he thinks they're going to start bleeding. He tries to calm down and get his breathing normal again, but it stays ragged for another couple of minutes, his heart beating unbelievably fast.

He sits and struggles and needs to do something, anything, but he only stays still and quiet and breathes himself through it, slowly starts to calm down and go back to the foggy state his thoughts were in a couple of hours ago.

He changed, somewhere between sitting down here and answering all the confusing questions absently, he changed into jeans that he's pretty sure belong to another deputy and took all of his layers off except one of his flannels. He's still so cold. Everything is so cold and deafening.

Stiles' mind is made of glass, he thinks, as everything about him is now, and he is full of cracks that deepen with every breath. He's going to break. There is nothing to say, nothing he can do about it; his breaking point is almost in reach, and he knows he's going to hit it rather sooner than later. He's going to shatter into a billion pieces and never have to worry about the loud sounds he can hear ever again.

He digs around in his pockets mindlessly until he finds a pack of cigarettes, already opened and only half full. He remembers the last time he smoked, in Scott's front yard. Allison's state had still been unclear. It had been uncertain if she would even survive. He considers lighting himself one now too, even if he is in a police station.

He doesn't really care anymore, to be honest.

He needs everything to be quiet.

The lighter is old and battered. It takes four full tries before a tiny flame snaps out of it, dancing across the metal. Stiles lights his cigarette and takes a deep drag, coughing against his wrist quietly. It tastes like shit, as always- he doesn't think that'll ever change. It tastes like death on his tongue, like iron in his lungs, ash pooling up in his mouth. He blows a little cloud of smoke into the air and allows himself to enjoy the way everything gets more quiet.

The pain in his heart reduces minimally.

He opens the window in his dad's office so the smell won't linger long, and leans on the windowsill for support. Everything swims a little bit before his eyes and he thinks that's not really great, but he's far too dizzy to be worried. He wouldn't be opposed to passing out again. He wants to go to sleep and wake up in a world where he's alright, where nothing of this ever happened, where he is just a stupid kid who likes crime and never dragged Scott into the forest at all.

He stays there, leaning against the windowsill with one arm, staring out the window. He doesn't know what he's waiting for anymore. He just knows the world goes quieter and quieter with every drag he takes on the cigarette, and when he's finished with the first one, he lights himself a second one. He can't help himself, he craves quiet.

He doesn't want the world to be loud again. He doesn't want to hear the electricity buzzing through the walls.

The door to his dad's office flies open.

"Stiles, I-"

 _Loud_. Loud, loud, _loud_. He loves his dad, but his voice is too much noise. It blends in with the static noise in the back of his head, it merges with his own voice, cold and cruel and it hurts him. Stiles doesn't turn around, just closes his eyes and breathes out, pursing his lips a little. He feels lighter when he does.

He hears nothing. Nothing at all.

Someone steps next to him, a hand touches his shoulder. He opens his eyes slightly again. The skin is a little too pretty, a little too tan and no ring is on the ringfinger. It's Scott, _Scott_ , of course Scott is there, Scott's got him. He can always rely on him, with everything. _Scott's got this_. He doesn't deserve someone looking out for him like he does. Stiles doesn't deserve him. He deserves nothing but pain.

He wants to scratch his arms open until they're bleeding, and he wants to smash a bottle or a guitar or all of his dreams maybe, and he wants to punch something repeatedly until his hands are bleeding. Nothing of the above is really worth his energy or his time, though, so he stays put, tired and overwhelmed.

"Hey," Scott mumbles. His voice is soft, kind of shrill against the loud, dark thumping in his skull; he thinks it's his heart beating in his throat, but it's too fast for his lethargic being. He thinks maybe it's _Scott's_ heartbeat, so fast because he's scared for him, of him, because he only causes Scott problems, he only causes everyone problems.

_Thump, tha-thump- thump, tha-thump-_

It's a steady rhythm, a sound that thrums through his head like the most forbidden song of this millenium, and he knows it would stick with him even further, through the end of the world and everything that comes after if he would still be here to roam the world with his empty eyes and loud thoughts, a tune that sits on his tongue so loosely he feels like he could sing it, hum it, scream it from the top of his lungs. It feels like it mends his broken mind back together just for a split second, chains it to the thumping sound like an anchor.

Scott's heartbeat is too fast. He doesn't like that. He really doesn't like how loud it is against the static noise. His voice is nice, though. It's so affectionate and he doesn't even deserve it.

Stiles doesn't answer even though he sounds like himself again. He wants to, he could (should, _should_ ), Scott deserves to know he's here, but he can't bring himself to say anything. He's too tired. He just takes another drag on his cigarette, staring out of the window blankly.

 _Tha-thump- thump, tha-thump- thump,_ and Stiles hates himself and everything he did, everything he does; he's so fucking weak, so unbelievably _pathetic_. There is no good in what he does – not anymore, anyways – and what he does is nothing that would make him someone to remember, someone who deserves to be loved.

Maybe he never deserved love in the first place. He did let the nogitsune in, after all, and he wasn't smart enough to see it coming, he wasn't smart enough to see through its strategy, see how it would use Malia against him- everyone, every single person in his life was just a simple pawn to the demon in his head, just a playing piece he could shove around on his board, his stupid fucking game of Go. 

"What are you doing?" Scott mutters. Stiles hates how small he sounds. Scott is strong and kind and not scared, never that scared like he is right now, but he's not scared _of_ Stiles like he has every right to be, he's rather scared _for_ him. And he _hates_ that.

He moves closer, buries his nose in Stiles' temple, slings his arms around him. It's warm. The noise of his heartbeat is deafening when he is this close, drowning out everything else he shouldn't be able to hear. It slows down a little when Stiles is wrapped in his hug, Scott scents him and inevitably calms down.

He doesn't like that his presence calms Scott down. It should alert him. It should set him on edge, because Stiles is dangerous even when he pretends he's not, all he does is hurt people. He doesn't want Scott to get hurt. Or Derek. Or his dad. Or _Derek_. Or Lydia. Or Derek, with his perfect lips and the best coffee in the world. He couldn't bear watching the light in Derek's beautiful green eyes fade away and listen to his dying breath.

He couldn't live knowing someone died because of him. Not again, anyways. Just like his mother, they'd just be gone like they were never there, never touched by his presence. Gone because of him.

Stiles wants to burn himself with the cigarette, and he wants to hit himself in the head maybe, and he wants to punch something repeatedly until his hands are bleeding, preferably the window because that could shatter and reflect exactly how he feels, but nothing of that really is worth his energy or time, so he stays put.

Scott gently takes his wrist and kisses his arm lightly, the affectionate motion sending a shiver through Stiles. It clears his foggy thoughts, if only a little. He looks down at the cigarette and his index- and middlefinger curled around it. He feels like he has ash pooling up in his lungs.

He drops the cigarette on the windowsill and stubs it out, leaning into Scott's embrace before he can comment on it and tiredly closing his eyes. He turns his head just minimally so he can rest it on his best friend's shoulder and listens to the things he shouldn't be able to hear get louder and louder again, the weight of his bruised, heavy heart slowly suffocating him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, more to his dad than Scott. He probably can't even hear it, but it's nice to pretend he can. It's nice to pretend Stiles isn't different, even when he is in every way he can think of.

Scott gently shushes him. And then his dad is there too, slinging his arms around him, and the contact almost makes Stiles cry, almost- but then he feels like he's run out of tears and he has nothing left to cry over except for the fact that these people, these wonderful, beautiful people still manage to love him even when they shouldn't, they shouldn't, they _shouldnt_ -

"I'm sorry," he repeats, louder, and then, "Shouldn't smoke. Just makes everything quieter."

It always has, it has when Stiles' mom had been dead for five years and he'd needed something to distract him from the pitying looks everyone was giving him, and it has worked when Erica and Boyd died, and it's worked through all the bullshit he endured in between. That doesn't mean it's a good coping mechanism, and it sure isn't healthy. Smoking kills, after all, and Stiles can't do anything to change that. He wishes he wouldn't rely on cigarettes this strongly when he needs himself to shut up. He wishes he wouldn't delude himself into thinking that it was okay as long as he didn't smoke every day.

He hates everything, and himself most of all. He wishes he would just be normal, but there's no going back to who he was once, before his mind got ripped into pieces and scattered across his hometown, gone with the wind.

"Don't be sorry," his dad mumbles. "Not for that. You don't need to excuse yourself for trying to kill that sadness inside of you. Not in front of me."

It makes sense, sort of, him saying this. 

Stiles still thinks his dad should hate him, despise him for what he's putting him through every day, every second he spends breathing; but it's as much not in John Stilinski's nature as it is in his to resent broken people, and Stiles is the most broken thing the nogitsune has ever seen. Or that's at least what he had said, joyfully and cruel as ever with _his_ voice and _his_ face, while Stiles had felt like he was going to die trapped in his own mind, watching him hurt Kira and hurt Scott and wishing himself to be dead already.

They stay there in their little three-man-hug unl they can't anymore. Then his dad moves, and brushes Stiles' hair out of his forehead.

"We may have a lead," the sheriff says quietly. "There was some sort of rune message on the floor of the crime scene. I asked Chris and Deaton to check it out, and our vet recognized the runes as some magical language. He thinks someone put a bounty on Chloe's head and, well, someone collected it."

Stiles closes his eyes briefly. "Calling a meeting?" he asks Scott. "Pack?"

"Yup," he confirms, burying his nose in Stiles' shoulder again. "Isaac's worried sick about you. Well, everyone is. Derek is uncharacteristically emotional."

Derek.

Stiles thinks of lying in his arms again, snuggling close to his racing heart, wanting to smile at its ridiculous pace but not sure how. He thinks of kissing him, but he does that a lot, so it doesn't (shouldn't, cannot) matter; except it does, because Derek deserves someone so much better and stronger than him. He can't kiss him anyway until he's eighteen, and that is in five months he's pretty certain he won't survive.

He's had high hopes before, and he's watched them crash and burn before. Derek is clearly afraid of him. Stiles wants to scream again remembering the look in his eyes when he'd simply glared at him yesterday, like the werewolf wanted to be nothing but somewhere far, far away from him. Still, Derek had tucked him into his arms, given him good coffee, hugged him goodbye before he proved himself to be unworthy of trust again by doing something extremely shady.

Why do they want him, again?

Nobody answers a question that was never spoken out loud. Instead, Scott leaves, and his dad takes him home.

Stiles shuts down again. He's not quite there, but he's not dizzy anymore either; here, on the brink of the void, everything is quiet anyway. The pack of cigarettes in his pocket feels heavier than it should. His dad hugs him again, tells him he loves him, and Stiles has a weird sense of déjà vu. Didn't this already happen before?

Then, the sheriff leaves to go investigate the murder without the supernatural extra stuff again, and Stiles is left alone again.

He wanders into his mom's room.

Everything is covered up and empty in here. He stands there for a while and looks at everything and silmultaniously nothing, ignoring the painful stench in his heavy heart.

He looks for his oil paint.

He hasn't painted anything on a canvas in years, not really ever since his mom left this world; he hopes that she is painting again beyond everything, hopefully in the good place she belongs. He sets everything up and kneels over the canvas because he's chaotic and shattered and doesn't know how to be okay anymore, and he doesn't know how to do normal, how to do rational anymore.

He starts painting with a bittersweet sense of melancholy and pride he hasn't felt in a long time.


	7. painting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wow guess what i think this is the last chapter where we don't have actual plot. shit's gonna go down now. i'll see you soon when we're finally getting the ass-kicking done!!

Scott is sitting in a car in front of the Stilinski's and debating whether or not he's an idiot.

He showed up at his house intending to take Stiles to Derek's loft; from what he's gathered, Stiles isn't exactly in the right state of mind for driving on his own and hasn't done so ever since their last encounter with the nogitsune. So he volunteers to get Stiles to Derek's, and they let him.

Stiles' house is silent. The cruiser isn't parked in the driveway, so he figures the sheriff is out investigating again. Stiles' jeep looks kind of lonely.

Scott gets out of Lydia's car (that she borrowed him because she's nice and totally not because she doesn't want Stiles in anyone else's car) and walks up to the house. It kind of unnerves him, and he doesn't know why. That's why he's waiting here like an idiot instead of just going in already. But a lot of things unnerve him these days and not all of them are justified, so he leaves it be and keeps walking up to the front porch.

He has a key, but the door isn't locked anyways. It creaks silently while opening and he kicks his shoes off quickly, not even bothering to shuffle out of his jacket. Jeez, is Stiles trying to get robbed? This isn't very good considering the hellhole they live in.

Scott can feel his worry grow with every step he takes into the dark house. All the lights are turned off, and he can't hear Stiles' heartbeat.

He can't hear Stiles' heartbeat.

_He can't hear-_

For a split second, Scott is paralyzed with fear. Then he basically bolts upstairs and into Stiles' room, but he isn't there. The room is empty, so very empty, dust caking every surface like he hasn't cleaned it for weeks.

Morbidly, he checks the bathroom next, but he isn't there either; the room is completely tidy, and no signs of Stiles whatsoever. Scott panics, his breath is coming out short and ragged because _he can't lose Stiles not again he just couldn't bear not knowing where he is-_

He turns around and suddenly flinches back horribly, his heartbeat goes racing and his arms are sent flailing. He stumbles backwards and crashes into a cabinet, the handles of it digging into his back before he lands on the floor.

It's Stiles.

 _Stiles_ , Stiles, Stiles, not the nogitsune, not the nogitsune, but why couldn't Scott hear his _heartbeat_ , why could he sneak up on him like that, it's Stiles, _Stiles_ , just _Stiles_ -

He's standing there like Scott's worst nightmare, towering above him in the dark, and for a split second the werewolf swears he sees something in his brown eyes, something that doesn't look like him in the slightest, that makes his eyes look like he's not human at all, but then Stiles blinks and it's gone.

Stiles. It's _Stiles_.

His heartbeat is there, loud and slow in the silence. They stare at each other until Scott's heartbeat settles just a little bit.

Scott's breathing is still ragged, but he manages to choke out a _"God,_ you scared me," that sounds absolutely terrified.

Stiles doesn't react, not really, he just turns around and walks out of the bathroom.

Wow.

Well.

Scott gets up and turns around to inspect the damage he's done to the cabinet, which isn't much except that the left handle is a little bit askew now.

He swears a little under his breath because _Jesus_ , his hands are shaking, before he goes after Stiles and tries not to stumble over anything. How in the world does Stiles even see in the darkness? Probably just pure muscle memory from living here, if Scott's being honest.

Stiles goes into his mom's room. There is actually light in there, and Scott resists the urge to roll his eyes at himself. Did he really not see that when he raced upstairs? God, for all that his werewolf senses are worth, sometimes he's still fucking blind.

Scott hesitates for one long second before he follows his best friend.

He immediately freezes in the doorframe.

Stiles is kneeling over an absolutely breathtaking painting. His fingers, doused in the dim light of a dust-coated lamp, are full of oil paint, curled around a thick brush.

It reminds Scott of the way they looked holding a cigarette. Stiles' fingers are a little bit too bony, holding things like they are all far too delicate for his hands; and he holds the paintbrush in a way that reminds Scott of times where they were little, when Stiles painted him bright yellow sunflowers for his birthdays and blue clouds when he was sad.

Right now, though, he's painting a wailing woman.

Scott isn't sure if it's supposed to be Lydia for a split second, but her hair is far from strawberry blonde and leans more into dark brunette or black. Her mouth is wide opened, distorted in a scream, her eyes closed.

Her expression, delicate features captured in harsh brush strokes that give the painting an abrasive touch, is one of pure suffering; she looks helpless, overwhelmed, and absolutely wrecked with pain.

He looks at it for a while, silently stunned by his best friend's sheer talent. Stiles chose dark, yet cool colors, contrasting blue with specks of yellow here and there that set the lighting in an astonishingly clever way. The image has a rough, honest feeling to it; and Scott feels like he is looking at something intimate.

He stares so long he doesn't notice Stiles stopping to paint the slight, subtle undertone in dark greens that make blue and yellow melt together, until he blinks harshly and snaps out of it, looking at him.

Stiles stares back at him. He still looks tired. Up close, he smells distinctly like cigarettes, with the usual hint of cinnamon and a very weak scent of honey underneath.

He points at the canvas with his paintbrush.

"That's how I feel."

Scott doesn't really know what to say, or do, so he steps closer, sinks onto his knees, and hugs Stiles.

 _Anguish_ is the word Scott would use for her expression. Stiles feels pure, helpless, overwhelming, painful anguish, and there really is nothing they can do against it except trying to make it better.

They stay like that for a long while, and Scott avoids thinking about anything but how sorry he is for everything. Maybe he says it a couple of times. "I'm so sorry," whispered against Stiles' hair. It smells like he showered just a couple of hours ago, his shampoo has a vanilla scent. Scott really loves vanilla scented shampoo, he decides there and then.

Stiles, for once, slings his arms around him, dropping the paintbrush. It clatters on the floor and he buries his cold nose in Scott's neck in a rather wolfish manner. Scott holds him closely, treasures this moment in the dim light where the smell of oil paint and vanilla appeases his nose, and maybe he sheds a tear or ten.

Stiles smells so unbelievably sad. It breaks Scott's heart in about a thousand different ways. Looking back at the painting, he almost shudders at the sheer agony in her expression, reflecting Stiles' insides.

Scott nudges Stiles' ear with his nose. "You know that I really appreciate that you're talking again?" Barely, but still, so much more better than everlasting silence. Stiles shrugs; another one of these things. It's taking time, but they're getting there a lot faster than Scott had originally anticipated. He's so proud of his best friend.

He mumbles, "I love you, Stiles."

"Why?"

The question catches him off guard. He doesn't break up their hug, though, only sniffs a little bit and catches a hint of bitterness in Stiles' scent, and some sort of hatred that burns in his nose and makes him want to scratch at his own arms, to dig his fingernails into his skin.

"How can you?" Stiles asks, voice barely above a whisper. "I'm not worth loving, Scotty."

Scott is pretty sure his heart stops for a couple of moments. Then it starts to hurt in his chest.

"Yeah, you are," he whispers back. "You just can't see it because you keep blaming yourself for everything that happened. You really don't need to."

"I don't know how to stop."

"You will, eventually. I'm not letting you brush this off and act like you're fine. You're going to be alright, someday. We all are."

It's calming to say it out loud.

Stiles eases into his embrace a little bit more and mumbles, "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"Of everything. And myself."

Scott presses a tender kiss onto his hair and breathes in the weird combination of vanilla, cigarettes and sadness. He says, "But you're not a monster, Stiles. You're not the nogitsune. It's okay if you're scared, but that's gonna be alright too. One day."

"One.. day," Stiles hesitantly agrees. "Yeah."

"Yeah."

He presses another soft kiss onto Stiles' dark hair, trying to put as much he can into the gesture; _I love you, I need you, I miss you so much, I can't do this without you, please don't leave me alone, please let me help you._

He thinks Stiles maybe understands all of it, or maybe he understands nothing because he doesn't want to believe himself worthy of anything other than pain. He tries not to think too much of the latter.

They sit like that for a long time, hugging each other quietly. Scott breathes in cinnamon and cigarettes and gives Stiles the time he needs until he moves to get up. The werewolf helps him because he's pretty sure he also feels like he has pins and needles in his feet. He catches Stiles before he can trip and fall over, and then beams when his best friend's lips turn up slightly in the ghost of a smile.

Stiles washes most of the paint off and gets changed, and much to Scott's surprise, he comes back wearing only black jeans and a green shirt. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. He is cold to the touch, but he doesn't seem to freeze as much as he had a few hours prior anymore.

He still grabs himself his jacket, though, and Scott pulls his shoes back on, waiting for Stiles to do the same, but Stiles' shoes are completely drenched in mud and ice cold and he pulls out combat boots that most definitely belonged to his mom once. They're a bit high-heeled and make Stiles efficiently even taller than Scott than he already is (which really isn't that much), but he manages to walk in them just fine.

To be honest, Stiles could probably walk just fine in Lydia's highest six inch heels. He has a proficient talent right there. Scott tells him as such and gets rewarded with another little smile.

It's great. Kind of. Stiles still has a smear of green paint on the back of his right hand and he's still more silent than Scott wants him to be, but that's more than alright.

They drive to Derek's. Isaac probably heard them coming, because they don't look too surprised seeing them. Scott takes a moment to look at his pack while Stiles is fighting his shoes behind him; Lydia has settled on the couch with Kira and is doing her nails, Isaac is sitting on the floor, leaning against Kira's legs. Derek and Peter are sitting seperately. The older of the two of them is taking up as much space as he can, exactly like he was when Scott left.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes at Peter and turns around to look if Stiles is getting anywhere with taking his boots off. The answer is no and yes, because Stiles gets one of them off right when Scott is looking, and then promptly stumbles over his own feet because of the difference in height and crashes into the coat stand, taking it down with him swiftly.

It clatters on the floor with enough noise to send Derek up on his feet. Stiles grunts and then starts to spout angry sounding words in Polish when he notices the jackets sprawled over the floor.

"Dude," Scott says with emphasis, "You okay?"

" _Co to kurwa jest_ \- yeah, yeah - _zajebisty_ , Miecysław, świetnie sobie _radzisz_. Kurwa radykalny, dziesięć na dziesięć jak zawsze."

He finally manages to scoop himself off the floor and picks up the coat stand, beginning to put the jackets back onto it. Scott turns to Derek, who looks like he's on the brink of bursting into a laughing fit. The older werewolf eventually scoots past Scott and picks up some stray scarves and Lydia's gray cardigan, placing them onto the hanger gingerly.

Stiles looks sort of angry, but in an embarrassed kind of way. His cheeks are a little bit flushed. He looks down at his feet, one of which is still stuck in a combat boot, and mutters, "Jezus Chrystus."

Scott snickers quietly and then lets Stiles passive-aggressively pull the shoe off and dump it next to the other one.

He exhales and walks over to the rest of the pack, not bothering with waiting for Scott. Derek strolls after them soon enough, just in time so he can watch Stiles sit down exactly where he was sitting before. Scott snorts under his breath at the look on Derek's face. In the end, the older werewolf just walks over there and cuddles up with Stiles.

It's an... unusual sight, to be honest.

Still, watching Derek scoop Stiles into his arms, and then watching Stiles leaning his head against Derek's chest makes his heavy heart feel a little bit lighter, a little bit better.

They pick out a movie. Lydia finishes Kira's nails, and now they're filed to perfection and a vibrant yellow. It fits Kira's yellow-black clothes. They make some popcorn and Isaac steals the bowl, so they make another one. 

Stiles falls asleep. Scott understands that, sort of, because he thinks Stiles slept four hours at most in the past three days.

Somewhere in the third quarter of the movie, Scott's phone starts to ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a tumblr now :)
> 
> http://stereksheart.tumblr.com
> 
> have a wonderful day and maybe leave a comment for me, i appreciate you <33


	8. different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the sheriff is mildly stressed, to say the very least. stiles has found a new hobby in discovering severed heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been a psa: i'm dramatic for no damn reason in this chapter.
> 
> join me on my tumblr :))
> 
> http://stereksheart.tumblr.com

Another dead body.

Yes, John officially despises this town.

It's the same thing. Decapitation, runes on the floor, the house is a mess. The dead body is still there and the head is gone, exactly like with Chloe.

Today's victim: Eric Credence. Again, no particular leads and no clues except the runes smeared on the floor. Deaton is still working on completely deciphering the message at the first crime scene. John makes sure to take pictures of this one too, immediately texting them to the veteniarian with a quick description of the house.

As much as he hates it, the immediate next thing he does is calling Scott and informing him about the murder. He hates dragging his kids into this mess, but they need to be on alert and prepared for everything. Scott tells him Stiles fell asleep again, and, well, the sheriff has to admit that he's glad his kid is getting some sleep.

Now he has to gather evidence. Again.

John quickly draws some minor, seemingly coincidental connections between Chloe and Eric. Both of them hadn't associated with a lot of people, they'd rarely been seen in town, rarely talked to their neighbors. Introverted people living a normal, quiet life. And yet someone, according to Deaton's rough translation of the runes of the first crime scene, had put a bounty on their heads.

He'd already conversed about that possibility with Chris. The hunter had informed him about the community. Bounty hunter families mostly kept to themselves, not bothering with supernatural creatures. Any human who knew who to contact could put a bounty on anyone's head if they had good reason to. Chris explained to him that there had to be a good reason that the bounty hunter had to deem reasonable, and the reason – revenge, payback, whatever you'd call it – had to be backed up by evidence.

For example, Derek Hale could've put a bounty on Kate Argent's head if he would've had hold of proof that she purposefully set the Hale House on fire. If he would've just contacted the nearest bounty hunter family without any evidence though, they would've probably told him to shove it up his hairy ass.

Chris' words, not his.

The hunter further told him that bounty hunter families usually shared information about targets, more or less making it a challenge who could locate the target and collect the bounty first.

"They're not considered to be very ethical, or reliable for that matter," Chris had told him, "bounty hunters tend to bail after killing their target, mostly to avoid complications with local authorities like you. Sometimes they even throw whoever hired them under the bus. That's why there aren't many people who hire them in the first place. Huge families that used to systematically train generations of bounty hunters are slowly becoming extinct, marrying into other families a lot and ceasing. Not many people know who to contact if you need a bounty hunter."

Chris had promised to go looking in his family's archives for more information on bounty hunters, and maybe if an ancestor of his knew one or two.

The sheriff is grateful for that, but all the new information is making his head swim. Finding out about werewolves and kitsunes and kanimas and whatever the hell was wrong with the hunter community had already been confusing enough, but the world just seems to have layers over layers of communities and systems that he never even wanted to know about.

When John gets back to the station after fruitlessly interrogating the neighbors for hours, he starts to set up another file and tries to multitask a bit, noting down all the information he has and making himself a mindmap on the two cases.

Contacting Chloe's family hasn't worked out in the slightest so far. It's like the Hallaces don't actually exist. There are only a few records about some bank transfers back when Chloe moved to Beacon Hills, supposedly from her mother's bank account, but upon trying to contact Anastasia Hallace, he's found nothing. There is nothing documenting to what highschool she went, from where exactly in America she is, et cetera et cetera – the trail of evidence suggesting that Chloe Hallace is a real person loses itself in nothing.

To be honest, he highly doubts Eric is a real person either. And with all that he knows, his family will probably be another dead end. For that matter, he has a not-so-subtle suspicion that Chloe Hallace is actually an alias, but he can't find any leads as to who the woman really was and why she would move to Beacon Hills and live here under an alias.

He writes that down and notes to look further into those bank transfers. He knows they were carried out at the Bank of California via electrical devices. He's already asked the bank for more information on the transfers and the two accounts that applied for them, but so far there is no response and that isn't helping him figuring out the identity of Chloe Hallace.

Which leads him into a dead end again, because if he can't find out who she really was, then there is no point in trying to figure out why anyone would put a bounty on her head, or what Eric Credence and her have in common next to their quiet life. Maybe they don't have anything in common, who knows? For the sake of thoroughness though, he gets to trying to find the Credences and promptly runs into another dead end.

He has no leads on anything, to be honest. Eric moved to Beacon Hills years prior to Chloe, and seems to be even more private than her. Where the lack of information about Chloe is mildly confusing, Eric is like a ghost story. He doesn't know anything about the guy except the fact that he has a crapload of money despite being unemployed. Nobody knows anything about him, and he doesn't have any pictures of him, so running his face through an ID scanner won't be a possible option.

John is about to give it up right when his official cellphone starts ringing. With a little sigh, he picks up, bracing himself for more bad news.

"Beacon Hills police department, Sheriff Stilinski speaking?"

Short silence on the other hand. Then, "Uhm, hello? My name is Olivia Heller. I... uhm... I have somebody here who I think is your son? His name is Stiles?"

Jesus. Can somebody give him a break?

John sits up straight. "Yes, that is my son- wait, what is he doing? He's supposed to be with his friends."

He wistfully thinks of Chris and wishes the hunter would be here. It feels like things are getting a little bit too hard to handle again.

"He's... he... uh- he found a severed head buried in my backyard," the woman chokes out.

Oh.

Shit.

"Is he... alright?" John asks reluctantly, thoughts racing. Wait, how is he- where did he- Jesus. No. Goodbye. This is not good and he hates where this is going.

"Uhm... no? Yes? I don't really know, he... doesn't really talk."

The poor woman sounds traumatized. Finally getting his crap together, the sheriff moves to get his private cell phone, quickly typing out a text and sending it to Chris. "Ma'am, I'll pick him up. What's your address?"

"Hedgerstreet forty-seven. Right next to the river."

Right next to _that_ river.

John shivers thinking about how carelessly Stiles had described walking into that river, very well aware of the fact that he could've died there. He doesn't want to think about it, but he knows that the undertone that exactly that was Stiles' intention is the thing that keeps him awake at night.

He thanks Olivia for calling him and when she hangs up, immediately calls Scott.

The werewolf picks up. "Sheriff-"

"Scott, why isn't Stiles with you?"

He gets up and shrugs his jacket on, grabbing the keys for the cruiser. He nods at Deputy Parrish and gestures at the door, and Jordan nods, pointing at the file he's writing. Thankful for his work, John smiles at him before leaving.

Scott is stammering some nonsense on the other end of the line. John lets him do that for a while, knowing the kid will eventually get his crap together, and so it happens. The werewolf takes two deep breaths.

"He left."

"Left how?"

"I don't know!" Scott exclaims. He sounds frustrated and scared. "He just- he was asleep on the couch and we were watching movies and stuff, and then we went to have a break, you know, peeing and stuff, and then we went back into the living room and he was just gone!"

The kid sounds like he is on the brim of bursting into tears, actually.

"Hey. Hey, it's okay, I know where he is. I'm gonna get him now. He's safe."

"I'm sorry," Scott says mechanically.

"Don't be. 'S not your fault Stiles has decided on finding severed heads of recently murdered residents as his new free time hobby."

"I'm sorry, _what_?"

"The guy that got murdered today," John explains, buckling his seatbelt in, "Stiles turned up in some lady's garden and dug his head up. She called me in a panic."

"Oh... god."

"Yeah." He glances at the rearview mirror before turning left, driving in the general direction of the river. "So, any idea what the hell is up with that? Do you know why Stiles is so... uhm, unusually fixated on finding people's heads?"

"Please in the godfucking Lord's name tell me this isn't a Nogitsune thing," Scott utters under his breath before saying louder, "I'm gonna ask Deaton and Kira's mom again. I mean, Stiles hasn't exactly used to do that before he got possessed. Maybe it's an after effect or something."

The sheriff nods, then remembers that Scott can't see that and says, "Thanks, kid. Be in touch."

"Will do," Scott mumbles before hanging up.

He takes a turn and parks his car in front of number sixty-two, Hedgerstreet. He quickly looks before jogging over to the other side with the irregular numbers, but this part Beacon Hills is quiet and abandoned. He can see the river if he looks through the gaps between the houses. Hedgerstreet is on the very edge of town, and not many people live here. The apartment complex where Chloe died isn't too far away from this street.

But Eric lived on the literal other side of town. Why in the world is his head – generally assuming it is his head that Stiles found – buried in some woman's backyard here? John doesn't assume Olivia Heller has got anything to do with the situation, so why bury Eric's head in her backyard?

Fifty-one, forty-nine, forty-seven. He skims the building over. Beige-colored walls, small windows, shut blinds. The flowers in the front yard seem gaudy and grating in contrast, joyfully bright in the cool ambience of the winter. The house looks a little bit rattled. It hasn't got a doorbell and no mailbox as well, which is strange. John wipes his shoes on the doormat before knocking.

The door gets opened immediately.

Olivia Heller appears, or at least he assumes it's her. She looks like any other completely normal woman, in her late thirties maybe, her light brown hair straightened and cut to her chin. She's about three feet shorter than the sheriff and slightly pale.

"Oh, thank god you're here," she says in a hushed voice. She looks stressed, her eyes dart around the street before she steps aside and lets him in, quickly saying, "your kid creeps me out."

Yeah, his kid creeps him out sometimes too.

"Thanks for calling me," John says, dismissing her comment, and he steps into the dark house and lets Olivia lead the way.

The light in here is purely electrical due to the shut blinds. The sheriff briefly wonders what gigantic electrical bill that must wrack up if Olivia keeps the blinds closed all the time, then also dismisses that when the woman shuffles forward and leads him into her living room/dining room.

Stiles is sitting on the couch.

He is... dirty.

His hands and arms are covered in drying mud, it's on his clothes, in his face, decorating his pale skin nicely. He's not wearing shoes, and his feet must be frozen over completely. The sheriff barely catches that his socks aren't matching yet again – it's hard to tell because they're practically both brown – before he has to restrain himself from wrinkling his nose.

Stiles _stinks_. Like dirt and rotten flesh. He looks like he clawed himself out of a grave.

His attention gets drawn to the severed head on the table and he swallows his disgust back down.

Yeah. That guy is already turning purple. His eyeballs don't look so good anymore. His lips are pale and all liquid that should be in his face is pretty much gone already. John diagnoses death via decapitation.

He turns back to Olivia, who avoids looking at anything in the room, and then looks back at Stiles, who seemingly reverted back into himself again. He's basically cowering on the couch, his feet are shaking and he keeps crossing and uncrossing his ankles like his dear life depends on it, eyes fixated on the movement of his dirty limbs.

Shortly, John scoops his kid up, puts some sanitary gloves on, drops the head into an evidence container and then drives off with an apology to Oliva Heller and ten more worries on his mind.

He doesn't drive back home immediately, or to the station. Instead, he stops the car next to Stiles' favorite diner, gets them some fast food, and then they stay in the parking lot.

The sheriff unpacks Stiles' burger and curly fries for him. He got them with sour cream as usual. He sets the food down between them and starts to unpack his salad as well, giving Stiles a generally encouraging nudge.

Stiles looks at his burger like he's baffled by it. The sheriff is taken aback slightly trying to remember the last time he'd seen his kid eat more than half a plate spaghetti, and isn't very delighted when he can't really remember any specific time he did. He stabs into his salad with the plastic fork and picks the green vegetables up, starting to eat.

His son picks his burger up and wolfs it down.

It's... bizarre, sort of.

Stiles slings the food down unbelievably fast, he practically devours it in a manner of a few minutes. He looks kind of feral when he's full of grime like this and only wearing one singular layer. He eats in a way that reminds John distinctly of an animal, and he tries to get him to slow down, but Stiles doesn't really listen to him. Much to the sheriff's general disgust, he takes the sour cream, dips his fingers into it and then basically eats it right out of the little plastic thingy it's in, swallowing it down without anything else to accompany the taste.

Stiles licks his dirty fingers clean – gosh, there is dirt on them next to the sour cream – before wiping them on his shirt and staring at his empty food tray. Something weird sparks in his eyes, like amusement or humor, something joyful like that that gives his dark brown eyes a vibrance that he hasn't seen in a while. He gives himself a moment to just wonder.

"Stiles," he sighs then. "Jesus, kid, what is going on with you?"

His kid rubs at his nose and sniffs, looking out the window and shrugging half-heartedly.

"Really? Is that your answer? A half-assed shrug?"

Stiles casts him a glance that he would call frustrated consideration before saying, "No idea."

"No idea why you keep finding severed heads? I mean, the first time could've been dumb luck for all we know, in more than one way, but the second time? You just walked away from Derek's loft, through the entirety of Beacon Hills, wearing jack shit by the way, and then walked into some random lady's garden and dug up a freaking head- Stiles, what the hell is going on?"

Stiles' hand twitches harshly, and he bares his teeth, growling at John, " _What_ part of 'I don't know' is so hard to _understand_?"

He can't recall backing away from his son, but with the way Stiles is glaring at him, he can't blame himself that much.

God. He hates this.

"I'm sorry," he leans forward into Stiles' reach again, his heartbeat settling slightly. "I didn't mean to- sorry."

Stiles closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. "I don't know _what_ the fuck or _how_ the fuck, Dad," he grits out through his teeth.

"I just know that Death is in town. And she's reaping with a joy, you can't imagine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do yall think stiles is? please do leave a comment, i appreciate you <33 stay safe and healthy!!


	9. starvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stiles is convinced he's a monster. it turns out to be (halfway) the truth.
> 
> he just wants to eat.

The sheriff falls silent, looking at his son for a while until he goes back to eating his salad quietly. "I think I have shoes in the back."

Stiles turns around and hefts himself up, poking his head through the seats before reaching out and snatching the shoes. They're his muddy ones that froze over. God knows why they're in his car, he could've sworn they were in their hall – but he doesn't protest while Stiles slips them on and ties his shoelaces with robotic motions. He seems to be far away in his head again.

"Hey," he finally sighs, putting down his salad. "I'm sorry I snapped at you like that earlier. You're going through... something _else_ right now. I shouldn't be angry. I just miss you, kid. I miss you talking to me and laughing and complaining about the food I eat."

"Hard to adjust, huh?" Stiles' voice still has an angry undertone, harshly contributing the way his expression hardens right as he speaks. It's the kind of look in his eyes that makes John regret not looking after him better, the kind that looks so unbelievably grown-up already, bitter and vicious. "Now that I'm so _different_."

The sheriff side-eyes him. "What are you talking about?"

"You all treat me like I'm such a _fragile_ thing," Stiles spits out. "Like I don't have the ability to _hurt_ someone. Like I'm not a ticking time bomb."

"You aren't-"

"Yes, I _am!_ Don't you get that? I _killed_ people, Dad!" Stiles yells, and John's blood runs cold. "I killed people, and I _remember_ it, and you all treat me like I'm not a- like I'm not a _monster_!"

"Because you _aren't,_ " John insists. "Get that into your thick, stubborn skull, you are not a monster."

"Then _tell me_ what the hell is wrong with me," Stiles' quivering voice is a stark contrast to his yelling before. He looks absolutely and utterly frightened. John's heart hurts when he looks at his son. "What the hell is _happening_ to me?"

"Stiles, I swear," he begins, determination fierce in his tone, "I swear on my life that nothing, _nothing_ is wrong with you. No matter how different you are from who you used to be, and no matter how much I miss who you used to be, you are completely right and perfect just how you are right now. I swear, you are _not_ a monster."

His son just looks at him in something akin to desperation, fingers cramped up, clearly looking for a lie in his features. He won't find one, no matter how hard he looks, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

"I promise, kid," he says softly. "You're different, yeah. Something is up with you, yeah. But I really don't care."

Stiles doesn't move an inch, but his gaze dips to his shoes in defeat. "What if I'm cursed or something," he mutters, his voice small and shaky.

"I'll have you anyways," the sheriff answers easily, "Cursed or not, you're my kid. And I love you more than anything else in the world."

Stiles closes his eyes. A million things seem to go wrong and right in his expression at the same time, like suddenly his features are trying to tell John a thousand things Stiles can't articulate just right again, worry and fear and sadness and dread and horror and so much more darkness than there was in his eyes before when he opens them again, staring out of the window emptily.

Hollow. Numb.

"I'm not worth it," Stiles whispers.

The sheriff closes his eyes for a second.

"Yeah. You are."

John drives his son home again. Well, first he drops the evidence container with the head off at the station and then he drives them home.

He texts Scott and gets back to work while Stiles goes to shower upstairs. The water gets turned on when the sheriff pulls up everything he has on Eric on his laptop and starts to renew the file. He looks for reasons why someone would put a bounty on this guy's head, but Eric has a criminal record so clear he looks like an actual saint; not even speeding is anywhere in there.

Considering how Beacon Hills is just filled with crimes, that actually kind of adds to his theory that Eric, exactly like Chloe, isn't actually a real person. He's already asked for a DNA-probe of both victims so they can identify them.

Stiles showers for a long time and then strolls around on the first floor. Or at least John assumes that he does. His sons footsteps are awfully quiet as of late. He's getting used to it though, slowly, but surely.

Which is why Stiles suddenly talking right behind him only startles him a _little_ bit.

"You think the two murders are related?"

The sheriff turns around and finds his kid staring at his laptop, dressed in a black T-shirt, a cozy-looking gray cardigan and washed out sweatpants. Stiles is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. His eyes are dark and slightly bloodshot, like he cried.

"What, Eric and Chloe?"

Stiles nods. "Yeah."

"Do you?" John asks softly.

But his kid only shrugs. A pause.

"I don't remember going anywhere," Stiles then says hesitantly. "I was asleep at Derek's and the next thing I know is that I'm kneeling in dirt, holding a severed fuckin' head in my hands. I don't know how I got there. I think I sleepwalked."

"Did that happen with Chloe too? Did you black out or something?"

Stiles shakes his head. "Not even close. It was like I was in a trance with her. I just took one step towards the river and then I couldn't stop taking more."

It's the most Stiles has talked since the incident in the school. In a row, anyways. None of it makes sense to him, and John finds himself wanting to say a lot of things, but in the end, he decides on a soft smile and a gentle "Thanks, kid. For telling me."

Stiles just nods.

Silence.

"Do we have leftover spaghetti?"

"Are you still hungry? You just wolfed curly fries and a burger down."

Stiles shrugs. "I'm really hungry. Sorry."

"Don't be."

Stiles nods again and saunters off into the kitchen, the cardigan clutching to his too thin frame. It's kinda good, him eating more. John looks after him for a moment or two before he pulls his phone out again and sends a few texts, to Chris, Deaton and Scott.

"Hey, Stiles?" he calls out.

Stiles is back in the doorframe in a second flat. "Yeah?"

"I texted Deaton. I don't know, maybe you're just having, like.. temporary after effects. He's gonna have a look at you, okay?" Stiles looks at him for a few seconds, his expression not giving away any internal conflict.

"Yeah, okay."

He goes back into the kitchen and John goes back to his murders.

After a while, the doorbell rings, and the sheriff goes to answer it; and upon seeing Lydia, Scott and Deaton, he feels a little bit lighter.

-

Lydia is distressed.

She's on point perfectly as always, wearing a navy blue skirt, a white-blue T-shirt, and a fitting white vest. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, decorated by a slender black ribbon. The little handbag she's carrying with her and her shoes, designer ankle boots, are also matte black, nicely contrasting the light colors and completing her look.

She's supposed to be calm. Her nails are done to perfection once again, her makeup is flawless, and she has everything under control.

But at the same time, she doesn't.

Everything around her, including her shaky control of her emotions, is starting to fall apart again, and the thought makes her want to cry a lot. She's built up a wall again, such a fragile one, and she knew it was going to shatter, she knew it from the second she started building it, but she continued to build anyways.

Lydia can't live right when she doesn't have some semblance of normality. She is completely messed up and she can't look at someone who is one of the most important people in her life.

Stiles. She can't fucking look at him and it's making her want to scream.

Every time she does, she gets thrown back into that cold, dark corridor, where she was caged in between iron bars and the nogitsune's cruel words, spoken with Stiles' voice like it belonged to the demon; every time she does, she fears that his dark, tired eyes will get that raving gleam that speaks of absolute insanity.

Every single time.

So she tries to avoid him, clear her head, ignore the threatening prospect of the murder and then the second one too, and for a short while, it works. The only thing that's still on her mind is Allison; the huntress in the hospital, recovering, and Lydia clutches to the fact that she's awake like a lifeline, clutches to it as the only thing that can still help her feel normal.

She feels like she's going crazy all over again. There is just that constant feeling in her throat, like she could break into a scream any second, and she can't stop it from happening.

The hospital is the only thing she can think of, where Allison is, but also where the morgue is, where dead people and living people collide every single day, every single hour; every person sighing out their soul, breathing their last was alive and well in there once. It's where she could look at Stiles for a moment and not see her worst nightmare in his eyes.

Only shadows.

Shadows seem to live underneath Stiles' skin now.

But now? Now she's on his front lawn, all dolled up in this idiotic skirt that makes her feel an idiotic sense of security that _isn't even there_ because people are getting _murdered_ and she can't pretend like she's alright but she still _tries to_ and her wall collapses so much faster and so much more rapid than she's anticipated it would.

She steps into the Stilinski's house anyways, heels clattering on the wooden floor. The hall is so familiar and Lydia can't help but gaze at the cardigan hanging there on the coatstand, the one that definitely belongs to Isaac. Stiles has been snogging clothes from all of the people that were a little bigger than him, she's picked up on that.

Probably to hide. He always hides.

Scott seems uneasy as always. He's developing seriously dark bags under his eyes and a constant frown is replacing his constant confused expression. He smiles at the sheriff half-heartedly, and Stiles' dad doesn't quite smile back, like he's forgotten how.

Deaton breaks the uncomfortable silence before it can even form.

"Shall we?"

They find Stiles rummaging through their fridge.

It's- not great.

There is a plate on the table, full of spaghetti-sauce-smears, and a fitting fork. Stiles seems unaware of them approaching, sticking his head into the fridge like he's looking for a treasure in there.

"Jesus Christ, Stiles," the sheriff says loudly. When Lydia turns to look at him, he's gaping at the plate in shock. "Did you eat _all_ of our leftover spaghetti?"

Stiles doesn't move his head out of the fridge and doesn't stop moving stuff around in it. He doesn't answer either.

John raises his eyebrows and says, "That was like five plates. You just had a burger and fries. Don't tell me you ate _five plates_ of spaghetti."

Stiles moves so abruptly Lydia can't catch it for a moment, he slams the fridge door shut and she actually almost flinches when he turns to look at them. Or, more accurately, _stare_ at them. His amber eyes are slightly bloodshot again, there is some ridiculously comedic spaghetti sauce in the corner of his mouth that only looks like blood if Lydia thinks too much, and he doesn't _blink_. He just _stares_.

It creeps all of them out collectively, to say the least.

Scott is the one to take the step forward. Or course he is.

"Stiles?"

Stiles opens his mouth, forming words but not actually saying anything out loud for a second, before he slowly manages, "I... I'm hungry. Why am I so _hungry?_ " He leans back, looking up at the ceiling. "I feel like I'm _starving_."

Lydia hates to admit it, but she feels safer the second he looks away.

Deaton approaches him with something so cautious in his movements she feels like she isn't so alone in that.

"Stiles, how much have you eaten in the past four days?"

Stiles looks back down with wide eyes, but he doesn't look shocked or something. He just looks crazed. "I ate nothing. _Nothing_ , nothing, nothing, yesterday a quarter plate spaghetti, and now I feel like I could eat _you_."

"Please don't," Deaton idly remarks, and Stiles lets out a hysterical laugh that sounds wrong. "Have you noticed... changes? In your everyday.. behavior? And changes in your ways of interpreting the world?"

Stiles presses his hands onto his ears. "You are so- annoying," he groans out. "You're so loud. Can you please not be so loud? And stop being so cautious with me."

"I'm not cautious," Deaton says.

"Sure you are. I can _smell_ it."

Lydia thinks her heart stops beating for a moment or two.

"..What's that supposed to mean?" the veterinarian asks slowly.

"It means- that you, all of you, smell cautious and worried and _afraid_ and Lydia! Lydia! Lydia! You are... terrified! _Lydia!"_ he exclaims, looking at her again. His leg bounces up, and down, and starts to tap an irregular rhythm against the floor while he balls his hands into fists and leans his head back again.

"Yeah, I am," she finds herself saying. "You're scaring me."

"All the time," Stiles adds. "You always act like I'm _him?_ I don't know why?" He laughs. "I'm so... I'm so... messy."

"Yup, you are," Deaton contributes.

Stiles closes his eyes. "I'm so _hungry_ ," he groans again, doubling over a little.

"I don't think you'll be able to satiate yourself."

"What the hell does _that_ mean?" John asks the veteniarian, horrified eyes trained on his son.

"Chaos," Deaton simply answers. "Strife. Pain. The nogitsune fed off that the entire time when it possessed you, Stiles. You crave it exactly like he did, but you can't eat it like he can. You're not a nogitsune. Your body is trying to simulate being one somehow, and that works to a certain degree, hence the better senses, but that only makes your hunger worse. You're going to starve."

Scott lets out a panicked, high-pitched, " _Starve_?"

"I don't suppose he somehow has the abilites of a nogitsune just because he smells like one all of the sudden," Deaton says dryly. He looks almost hostile. "Which, by the way; you should _not_ be able to have enhanced senses."

Stiles lets out some sort of gasp-groan-growl abomination, holding his stomach. "It hurts," he says woefully.

"Well, I apologize," Deaton raises his eyebrows, "but suck it up."

"Are you shitting me?" Scott asks incredulously. "He's in _pain_. You can't- we can't just let him starve!"

"Maybe you can't," the veterinarian shrugs, "but I can. Have a nice day."

With that, he moves, getting halfway to the door before Lydia steps in his way.

She meets his gaze with cold eyes and a raised chin, challenging, daring him to push past her.

He doesn't.

Stiles tenses up, his whole body convulses all of the sudden in anticipation, and then he moves, again, faster than she can catch, and is abruptly in front of Scott, staring at him.

He reaches out and touches Scott's bare wrist, and black lines shoot up his arm.

Stiles' eyes roll back slightly, and he opens his mouth and lets out an absolutely _bizarre_ , grotesque sound of satisfaction, like a broken moan of some sort that turns into a desperate sob towards the end, and his fingers close around Scott's wrist, he leans forward and against his best friend's shoulder heavily, shivering with his entire body.

Lydia counts five seconds, and then Deaton lunges at the pair, grabbing Stiles' shoulders from behind and pulling him off Scott with force. They snap away from each other, Stiles' arm still outstreched while Scott seems to be in complete shock, and then the veterinarian and Stiles crash into the fridge, almost falling.

Deaton lets go of Stiles and steps between him and Scott, eyes wide.

"You- you aren't able to do that," he stammers. "You shouldn't- you should not be able to- to do that."

Stiles' stance suddenly changes.

Instead of letting his shoulders droop, he straightens up, uses every inch of his height and lifts his chin a little. He narrows his eyes at Deaton, drawing his shoulders forward a little and balancing himself differently, supporting himself on his heels rather than the entire balls of his feet, his left leg forwards.

"You're standing between me and my food," Stiles says quietly. "And I suggest you get out of the way."

The veterinarian shakes his head vehemently.

"Something evil has taken root in you," he says, regaining his calm voice. "If I get out of the way and let you consume Scott's pain, we're only going to water it. Stiles, I'm begging you, don't let it grow further than it already has."

Scott finally snaps out of his trance-like state.

"I'm not gonna let you touch me," he tells Stiles. His shaking voice betrays his brave stance. False bravado. "I don't want to hurt you."

Stiles' eyes zero in on him like he's picking a target.

"Oh, Scott," he sighs. "I wouldn't worry about that, I really wouldn't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the little cliffhanger :)) comments are appreciated as always. thank you for your incredible support, this story has over a thousand and one hundred freaking hits!! i love you all so much.


	10. promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in the aftermath of stiles attacking deaton, he makes a promise.

_Hunger_.

What a weirdly profound thing it is, rooting so deep in history of humanity; hunger, a powerful weapon that has annihilated millions, maybe even billions of what is (was?) his kind, such a big problem that would be so easily solveable if the world were just a little less centered around opulence.

And right now, Stiles can't feel anything else.

His day has already been weird enough as it had been. Waking up holding a missing body part of a victim of murder in his grimy hands hasn't exactly been a blast. Then, in the car, as soon as he saw food, like _actual_ food, his hunger kicked in.

It was like suddenly the weeks of not eating anything while he was possessed and the following days where he simply couldn't bring himself to eat anything were just giving a shout. He devoured the leftover spaghetti they had, all the five plates, in an unbelievably short time, just stuffed it into his mouth because he felt like he was starving, it was making his insides feel like his stomach was trying to eat itself.

And eating didn't help for some reason. The hunger just stayed.

He's such a mess, honestly.

He feels like something is wrong, _very_ wrong with him, and one second he's staring at the contents of their fridge and the next he's screaming Lydia's name and then all of the sudden he's standing in front of Deaton, _threatening_ him, and he really doesn't want to and he doesn't know what he's doing and he's so dizzy and sweaty and so, so _hungry_ -

And then he snaps back into reality, right when he's about to lunge at the veterinarian standing between him and- Scott? Why is he blocking him off from Scott? He looks at Deaton again, the druid's face looks like someone _bashed it in_. Bile rises in Stiles' throat when his mind clears and his stomach stops hurting exactly as abruptly as it started. He turns his head and looks at his dad and Lydia, who are gaping at him, and Lydia is clutching to his dad a little.

What did he do? Oh _god,_ what did he _do?_

Stiles gulps and looks down at his hands. His knuckles are blood red. He stares at them as realization sets in, and then suddenly a lot more than just bile rises in his throat.

He bolts to the sink and starts barfing out everything he ate.

His body convulses as he retches violently, vomiting out spaghetti that he didn't chew properly, and then he just keeps retching for a good two minutes, throwing up spaghetti and curly fries. Puking like that brings tears to his eyes, and he is vaguely aware that he's gripping the sink so firmly his knuckles are white, shaking.

Finally, he yaks out some bile that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. His skin feels clammy and sweaty, hot and cold at the same time. Everything is spinning.

He breathes heavily for a couple of seconds, unseeingly staring at the legitimately disgusting amount of undigested food he just puked into the sink, before he coughs and gets his heavy limbs to move. He leans his head against a cold surface (maybe the wall) and closes his eyes.

Yeah. _Fuck_.

He definitely ate too much.

Without opening his eyes, he fingers for the sink and turns on the water, hopefully washing all the vomit away, and then slumps and barely catches the handles of a drawer before he is sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall heavily.

He swallows and ignores the taste dutifully, looking up at Deaton, his dad, Lydia and Scott through tired eyes. He mutters something that vaguely sounds like "Matkojebca" and then collapses.

His temple hits the wall hard and Stiles' unconscious drifts away from his body, like he's swimming against a flux he can't hold up against. He lets himself float with it instead of fighting it, closing his eyes and dozing off.

He's crying.

 _Laughing_.

_Both? Neither?_

He's laughing. 

_Crying._

_Derek is baring his teeth, but he can't see at what or why._

_Lydia is standing in front of him. She looks terrified of something behind him._

He's laughing.

 _Laughing_.

Laughing.

_Laughing while blood drips down his stomach from where his skin is torn open._

_Darkness_.

-

He wakes up slowly.

His heartbeat is the first thing he hears, and it sounds different – feels different, less painful and less sluggish. He thinks maybe he's turned into something horrible and now his heart is finally free of worrying whether or not he's good; the answer is clear now, he's not.

The day will come where Stiles is going to step towards his death and he's going to lay all of his sins, regrets and embarrassments bare without shame or guilt. He'll feel absolutely nothing while he's laughing in the face of the judges in hell. He'll feel absolutely nothing when he's left alone.

But isn't he alone already?

Stiles listens to his heartbeat, and then hears another one. Next to him and where he's lying (on his deathbed), slow and calm and grounding. He breathes in and smells the forest in all of its wilderness, shaving cream and beer.

Derek.

Stiles wants to laugh again. Again? Did he have a vision in the kitchen? Was that even real? Deaton and the horrifying hunger and his knuckles were slick and dark red with the veterinarian's blood, and then he was crying and laughing and dreaming of Lydia – _Lydia! Lydia, you are... terrified!_ – and the werewolf besides him and blood and he was laughing, laughing, _laughing_ while he was dying-

Is he even real?

He doesn't know if he's a real thing or not. He doesn't know if Derek, the room he's in, the bed he's lying on, he doesn't know if any of that is real. He's lost all connection to reality, once again, feeling not alone, but lonely.

Stiles is so unbelievably _lonely_.

He listens to himself in slight bewilderment, the urge to laugh morbidly grows stronger when the only thing he finds is sadness. It's like he's made out of pain and anger and desperate grief now, missing who he once was and not being able to get back to where he started. His body feels like it doesn't belong to him, and he doesn't dare try to make it truly his, too afraid of what will happen once he tries to find out why he can hear this well and keep his heartbeat steady all the time.

He's afraid of being a monster and he wants to laugh at himself for that. He's surrounded by monsters. The only thing he has to be afraid of are demons, and while his are dark, ugly things that he has to face alone, he's already survived a much worse demon than them. He's breathing hot and cold and sadness and anger mix up inside of him until he feels like a storm; until he feels like he could burn this whole nonexistent reality to ash.

Stiles opens his eyes and looks to the side, soundlessly turning his head. Derek is sitting next to him, reading a book again. When Stiles looks down at himself, he finds his wrists and ankles tied to the bed he's lying in. He recognizes the animal clinic's walls and tapestry and resists the urge to giggle like an idiot. He's just in a dream, a dream, a dreamy little dream that he can scream himself awake from.

This isn't even real. Is it? He's so confused and he still wants to laugh, he wants to laugh and cry until he can forget how much blood there is on his hands. He wants to rip and tear and scream at himself for being so stupid, so unbelievably _stupid_ , and lonely and sad all the time – he's so lethargic now and he hates it with a vengeance, hates how easily he's given himself up already. Stiles hates every inch, every single fiber of his being, of his empty mind and his body that doesn't belong to him.

"Hey," he rasps out.

Derek startles, almost falling out of the chair he's sitting in, and looks at him with wide eyes. "Stiles-"

He can't hold the snort back that escapes him. "Yeah, it's me. Good morning." He makes jazzhands as best as he can, trying not to crack a grin at the werewolf. Derek just blinks at him, scanning his face for something he can't even say isn't there.

"Stiles," he repeats. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Now he can't hold the grin back from stretching his lips, and it hurts. He feels like he's grimacing painfully, so long has it been since he smiled the last time. "Glad to see you too," he replies.

"No, seriously. What the hell is going on with you?" Derek asks. "You beat the living shit out of Deaton. You basically bashed his face in- _why_ are you _smiling?_ "

Stiles laughs. It sounds hollow. "You... you're not real," he shakes his head vehemently, looking up at the ceiling. He's so dizzy still. He doesn't try to fight against his swimming sight. "None of this is real. I'm not a real thing. This is just a trick. Another trick. I'm not real. You're not real, Derek." He closes his eyes. "You're just a figment of my imagination. There to, I don't know. Make me think I'm alright, I guess. I'm not. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not real."

Derek moves, he can hear it, and he can hear his heartbeat that speeds up just a little. It's nice and hurts to know that he still cares at the same time, that he still cares like Stiles _deserves_ it. It's hell on earth knowing that he's there. He doesn't want him to be there, yet he craves his presence like little to nothing else.

"Hey," Derek's voice is like a soothing balm on his frayed nerves. "Stiles. I promise, this is real. I'm real, you're real, all of this is real. Open your eyes, come on."

He shakes his head again and mumbles, "I don't want to. I don't want to wake up. Then I have to play this idiotic game again, and I lose every time. He always hurts them. Hurts you. He doesn't stop hurting them."

A short pause. Then, "You're not possessed anymore. The nogitsune is gone."

Stiles' lips turn upwards into a smile again. "Is he? Was any of this even real or did I just dream all of it? Nothing, nothing, nothing is real. Nothing is real and I'm not either."

"Yeah, you are," Derek's voice is so gentle. Stiles opens his eyes just a little and finds an unexpectedly soft look on his face. It looks good on him. The werewolf holds his hands up and smiles a little at him, hesitantly. "Come on. Count my fingers."

Stiles stares a little at him before his gaze slowly drops down to his hands.

One, two, three.

 _I can barely see_.

Four, five, six.

_I'm impossible to fix._

Seven, eight, nine.

_I've lost my mind-_

Ten.

Ten fingers. Derek has ten fingers.

He's not dreaming. This is real.

This is _real_.

Stiles wishes the storm of feelings inside of his heart would go on and rip him into pieces, but instead it dissolves into nothing and leaves him feeling even emptier than before. His core cools out and his heart starts to ache with every beat again, painful in his chest. He feels nothing, nothing but emptiness.

"Derek?" His voice is barely above a whisper, but of course the werewolf hears him anyways.

"Yes?"

"I hurt someone."

"Yeah, you did."

Stiles closes his eyes. So many things are happening and yet he feels absolutely nothing. It's insane, mildly, how fast he switches from feeling too much to feeling devoid of any emotion. He doesn't know what's wrong with him, and for a long time now, longer than he'd care to admit, he hadn't wanted to know, hadn't cared as for why he was so wrong in everything he did.

"So did I," the werewolf mumbles. "So did Scott. So did Allison. Doesn't make you a terrible person all of the sudden."

Yeah, it doesn't. But at the same time, he thinks it does. Because he doesn't remember attacking Deaton, he never remembers attacking anybody, he blacks out so much and walks around like a nightmare and he feels nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Stiles whispers, "What if I wanted to?"

"Did you?" Derek doesn't look like he hates him even when he should. He just looks like a safe thing to look at, like a beautiful, safe thing Stiles can always look at, like an anchor in all of this madness.

He slowly shakes his head. "I don't know. I can't remember."

Derek nods. "Do you right now?"

Stiles shakes his head.

The werewolf cuts the restraints that tie him to the bed. Stiles looks down at himself and finds his knuckles clean of blood. He raises his hands and stares at them, at the pale skin that should be red, red, red and slick and full of shards. He slowly looks at Derek again.

The 'wolf holds his arms out like a question and Stiles throws his own arms around him as an answer, burying his nose in Derek's shoulder while the werewolf presses a kiss onto his hair, holding him close and hugging him tightly.

"Deaton is okay," he whispers. "He's okay. And you're gonna be okay too. Stiles, I swear to god, we're going to figure this out, and you're gonna be okay."

Stiles wants to believe him, he really does. But he feels so lethargic and slow, like he's swimming against a flux again, an ice cold stream that he's going to drown in, and he doesn't have it in him to fight against it, to fight and come out the other side once more. He doesn't know if he has it in him to be that strong, and maybe he's never had it at all.

"Promise?" he asks anyways.

"I promise," Derek replies, easy and steady. He's a constant in his life that he can rely on like on nothing, nobody else. He's such a mess, but Derek is there, and Derek is soft and strong and gentle and he understands like nobody else does and Stiles feels safer with him than with anybody else.

The werewolf leans back a little until their chests are pressed together and their noses almost touch. His arms are still wrapped around Stiles. "I promise as long as you promise me something too."

"Anything," Stiles says, and it comes as easy as breathing should (could, would) be.

"Promise me you'll stay with me."

That could mean a thousand things, but none of them seem too hard to promise, not with Derek. Nothing is too hard with him, not now, not here.

"I promise," he whispers, and he presses a kiss onto Derek's cheek, sealing a swear that'll change his life for the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes. sorta filler chapter. i don't really like this one, but i hope you do. the next chapter is going to go into the plot again, because we have stiles' weird ass nature, two murders, and another one is going to happen. so get ready.
> 
> comments are appreciated as always, i love you all :)


	11. watch it happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> derek worries, stiles sleep-walks (sorta) and scott gets shot at.
> 
> what else is new?

It all goes to shit when Stiles sits up.

Derek has been sitting right next to him for a long time, monitoring his heartbeat and chemosignals religiously. Stiles fell back asleep again (and what is up with that? Why does he sleep so much all of the sudden?) and he's trying to steal more time with him. Scott is probably going to get here sometime soon, and he wants to just watch Stiles for a while and pretend like he can keep his promises.

Stiles looks different when he sleeps. More like he used to be. Again, Derek's heart aches with the knowledge of how much weight lies on Stiles' fragile shoulders; he's been here before, they've all been here before.

With his book long abandoned on his lap, he tries to think the events of the past few days through.

He thinks of Scott and Lydia, who are currently sorting things out with Deaton, he thinks of Chris Argent and the sheriff, currently trying to find the bounty hunter(s) responsible for the murders, he thinks of his uncle, currently doing lord knows what, he thinks of Allison, still in the hospital. He thinks of Stiles, _Stiles_ , Stiles, who probably (most definitely) isn't human, at least not anymore.

God, Stiles is so much better at figuring things out than he is.

He wishes he would know what the hell is going on with his friend. He really wishes he did. But, as usual, really, Deaton is being cryptic instead of helping. The veterinarian went somewhere with Scott and Lydia to quote-unquote "find more information about the type of creature Stiles might be" after Scott, Stiles' dad, and Derek listed all the things that were different about him.

The silent footsteps. Undetectable heartbeat that always stays the same. _Finding severed heads_. That emptiness in his scent that confuses Derek so much, that makes him only smell one single emotion whether or not Stiles feels more. Derek's wolf that's still so strangely wary of him.

Honestly, Deaton acts like he has everything under control, but Derek suspects the veterinarian doesn't know shit about what's going on. He's doing great, by the way. His face just looks like a car crash. His nose is broken, he has two swollen black eyes, his lip is split, all the nine yards.

Stiles, as much as Derek despises himself for it now that he's reflecting on it, never struck him as the type of person who could hit other people that hard. Be such a harsh, brutal thing. Stiles was always, has always been soft lines and breakable skin. But now he's a threat to his wolf and Derek thinks now he should know why. Because he saw the blood on his knuckles before Scott wiped it off, and he saw the bruises on Deaton's skin.

He knows what happened, theoretically, and he knows he should think about Stiles differently now, but he can't.

Maybe he just won't. Maybe he refuses to think of Stiles any differently no matter what he does, and to be honest, that terrifies Derek. He doesn't like that he has this automatic assumption that Stiles isn't a threat. He doesn't like how easy Stiles could (can) fool him.

It kind of confuses him too. Stiles just isn't violent. He's never been. Stiles has been loud and now he's quiet, he's been talkative and now he's silent, but he's not now and not ever violent. That's not him. That doesn't fit. Derek doesn't like that he doesn't fit all of the sudden.

But here they are, and Stiles is sleeping, and Derek is struggling to feel normal.

 _You're an idiot, Hale,_ he thinks, _you're an idiot that loves too much._

He stays like that for a long time, listening to Stiles' uneven breathing and his confusing heartbeat. It's almost as if it slips past his senses if he doesn't try to find it with all the concentration he has. Almost like an illusion. Almost like Stiles' heart isn't beating at all and Derek's brain is just filling in what he needs to be there, what he subconsciously has to imagine in order to stay calm.

_I'm not a real thing. Another trick._

Derek shudders.

Then Scott comes in.

The werewolf's shoulders are a bit hunched as usual, and his heartbeat is loud and so much easier to find than Stiles'. He closes the door behind him carefully, his footsteps quiet on the floor. His chemosignals speak of sadness and confusion, as usual these days. He wishes Scott wouldn't be so sad now. It irks him in a bad way, because he used to be so happy.

They all used to be so happy.

"Hey," he greets Scott.

"Hey. How is he?"

"He woke up," he tells Scott. "Uh, he thought he was dreaming. Didn't really believe me when I said I'm real. He kept repeating that he thought he was still- still- that the nogitsune was still there."

Scott looks a little bit scared and the sadness in his scent thickens. He gets himself a chair.

"He doesn't remember hitting Deaton," Derek says quietly. "He's.. terrified. That he's going to hurt someone again."

The younger wolf reaches for his best friend's hand. Lacing their fingers together and rubbing his thumb over the back of Stiles' hand, he shakes his head. "Yeah, that makes sense for him. It's really.. it's really him. Not- not someone else."

Derek abruptly turns his head to look at the alpha. "What did Deaton say?"

Scott exhales. Anger surfaces in his chemosignals, burning and biting like acid. "That he doesn't know what Stiles is, or why Stiles is, or how Stiles is," he snaps. "And I don't want to sit here and just wait for whatever is going on with my best friend to pass. This whole fucking-"

He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I shouldn't-"

Derek rests a supporting hand on his shoulder even when echoes of Stiles' voice hall in his head, distorted and cold and so, so cruel. Scott leans into the touch slightly, breathing deep.

"It's alright," Derek assures him. His tone lacks its usual asperity, but then again, it has been for a while and he can't bring himself to do differently with these kids. "You don't have to be strong all the time, Scott."

That seems to make something in the alpha snap shut. His shoulders slump, and he sucks in a shuddering breath before he turns a little and slings his arms around Derek. Mildly surprised, he hugs him back, comforting him as Scott buries his face in Derek's shoulder and starts to sob.

They sit there for some time, and Scott cries while Derek just wants to yell at someone for making the poor kid feel this way. Preferably the nogitsune. Or Jennifer. Or himself, maybe.

It takes a while before Scott calms down, and he wants to give him all the damn time in the world.

"I- I'm sorry," Scott sniffs. "I'm just- so terrified that I'll lose Stiles- I _can't_ lose Stiles, he's- he's my _brother_ , Derek," he sobs out.

The older werewolf presses a kiss onto his hair. "I know. I know. It's gonna be alright. He's gonna be fine, I promise."

He keeps making these promises like he has any chance he can get to keep them. Will it matter? Probably not. He's just kind of tired, he guesses. He's been repeating this for a while now, but things just get worse.

"You're going to be okay," he still says. "You're strong. I _know_ you are. You're-"

He doesn't get any further, because then Stiles suddenly opens his eyes and sits up.

Scott's head snaps around and he blinks with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. He seperates himself from Derek, turning his attention towards his best friend, and so does Derek.

Stiles stares straight ahead blankly, and something in his eyes sends Derek's wolf growling again, tensing up and very much sensing Stiles as a threat. He's still such a pretty thing, though, very real and _frightening_. But right now, as the werewolf looks at him, he just looks like a stranger. Not like Stiles at all, or at least not inherently.

Something in his eyes looks... _other_.

"Stiles?"

No reaction.

He supposes that shouldn't be new, but it kind of terrifies him more than ever.

Then, Stiles moves.

With weirdly robotic motions, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and gets up. His movements are silent, silent, so silent and Derek has to intentionally listen for his heartbeat before he can hear it, slow and sluggish and strange as always.

A monster?

Being a monster isn't all that bad. The word comes from the Latin _monstrum_ after all, which you can also translate as _miraculous sign_ for some truly magnificent reason. He's personally never hated being a monster all that much, having grown up with it, and he supposes he doesn't have it in him to deeply hate someone who becomes a monster. Not a friend, definitely.

Not Stiles. Never.

He and Scott exchange looks and stand up as well, right when Stiles starts walking towards the door.

Derek wedges himself between it and the teenager before he can get to it, blocking Stiles off from leaving. He stares at the younger one with hopefully obvious confusion on his face. Maybe his eyebrows do have something to them that makes his irritation apparent.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

Stiles' gaze wanders up, up, up to Derek's face, and his eyes look empty. Something in his eyes looks weirdly not like him, weirdly absent. A stranger. A strange, miraculous sign. He stands there and Derek counts to ten, getting to a solid eight before Stiles moves again and tries to push past him, trying to get out of the animal clinic.

He catches him by the shoulders. His collarbones are sharp underneath Derek's thumbs now that he's only wearing a T-shirt, way too sharp. His heartbeat is hard to catch, hard to catch, hard to imagine maybe-

"Stiles?" Scott asks from behind.

The teenager doesn't answer. He stares at the door blankly, not moving against Derek's hold for another ten seconds before he slowly turns and looks at him.

Before the werewolf can say anything (like _are you okay_ or _what is going on_ or _please tell me you're really you_ ), Stiles' hands fly up and he shoves Derek hard. He stumbles back, surprise and pain erupting inside of him as he flails until he collides with a table and burning pain shoots through his hip.

"Stiles!" Scott is right there while the pain reduces a little and Derek breathes in and out heavily, and Stiles dodges him when he tries to step in, turning around- and leaving.

Just like that.

Scott and Derek stare at each other for a total of like 0.357 seconds and then go after him.

Stiles doesn't bother with shoes or a jacket, or anything other than his sweats and his T-shirt even though it's not at all warm outside. The cold bites Derek's nose like it hasn't in a long time, and he feels raw and vulnerable.

_Don't leave-_

His bare feet strangely still don't make a sound as he walks away from the animal clinic and into an abandoned alley, and Scott and Derek follow suit after they grab a jacket for him.

He walks for a long time, tirelessly, out of Beacon Hills, until they come to a river.

_That river._

For a long while, Stiles stops moving, allowing the two to catch up with him. He stands and gazes at the dark water, silently watching the stream. Derek gets the strange sense that he belongs here when he looks at him.

"Stiles!" Scott calls out.

Stiles doesn't react. He only stares at the river. Then he keeps walking along it, and Derek and Scott can't stop him as he keeps going down the stream, farther away from the town. Other than Scott's and Derek's combined skyrocketing heartbeats, there is just silence following their voices.

As if Stiles is sensing something all of the sudden, he tenses, and then he abruptly falls into a sprint. Scott and Derek follow him quickly as Stiles breaks into the woods, almost disappearing from their sight but never vanishing fully between the trees.

It takes a few minutes before Stiles stops.

Panting a little, Scott and Derek catch up with him. He's staring at the ground now, his uncharacteristically dark brown eyes fixated on it. They almost look black in this light and uncomfortably remind Derek of an empty void.

Then Stiles kneels down in the mud and starts digging.

He claws through the sludge with his bare hands, something grimly determined spreads on his features, morbid in motion. He shovels it a little onto his clothes and to the sides as fast as he can, kind of making a mess of himself, and Scott looks at Derek with wide eyes. He stares back at the younger wolf, mirrorring his terror.

Stiles digs and digs and digs.

He reaches into the dirt, his fingers clamp around something. Something in his expression shifts, like some sense of displacement comes back to him – uncertainty, he supposes he could call it.

Before Derek can think about that right, Stiles pulls a severed head out of the dirt.

Just like that, and this day is even more insane than it already was.

It just- _dangles_ there, and Stiles' fingers are grasping her – it looks like a her – hair. He just looks at her with the most neutral, empty expression Derek's ever seen on his expressive face. The werewolf's stomach crawls when the smell of rotting flesh hits his nose.

Stiles blinks rapidly, his eyes clear up and refocus. He turns his head to look at Derek. There is sudden dread in his eyes, a helpless expression.

"Stiles?" Scott whispers, and he sounds absolutely terrified.

A voice shouts, "Hey!"

Derek turns around instinctively, towards the three heartbeats that suddenly appear out of nowhere. He sees something red, an article of clothing that looks like a coat or something like that, and a flash of brown hair, and then a gunshot rips through the silence.

He acts out of instinct again and flinches harshly, stumbling back and flashing his eyes at the woods. He stands there for a second, dumbfounded, and then realization hits him like a train. He turns to Stiles and right next to him is-

Scott.

Scott.

 _Scott_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof. this one took me longer than usual. i will return to upload sunday next week as usual, tho. comments are appreciated as always, thank you so much for the incredible love and support this story has received <3 
> 
> (and get ready for some kidnapping because bounty hunters are gonna bounty hunter)


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